Characters - Love or Hate 'Em

Do protagonists have to be likeable? I have always believed so, but if recent works I've read are any indication others do not share my belief.

I just read a short story where the narrator was bigoted and selfish. By the end of the story I did not care that he had redeemed himself because I had learned to dislike him from the very start. First he made fun of a blind man and then he questioned if the blind man had married a "colored" woman. He did not want the man in his house.

During the course of the story story he proceeded to get drunk and despite his opening to the blind man by the end, I did not like the man nor did I like the story. I like stories where characters change for the better, but because of the short story setting, I did not see where this man's changes would last since they occurred over a three hour period.

So likeability in this case became a matter of believability in the character's ability to embrace change.