2010-10-25

Classic!

Matt Yglesias hilariously tries to rebuke Charles Murray's recent Washington Post article, but only manages to demonstrate the very obliviousness Murray describes. See if you can spot the error:
For example, what is one to make of this?
Talk to [the New Elite] about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.
Of course this paragraph doesn’t make sense to publish unless you assume that a large proportion of Washington Post readers know that “MMA” stands for “mixed martial arts.” And the non-NASCAR Jimmie Johnson isn’t just some former coach, he’s familiar to 100 percent of NFL fans thanks to his ubiquity on Fox’s Sunday broadcasts. And pro football is hardly a pursuit of the narrow elite—it’s the most popular sport in America and one of the relatively few endeavors that, in this era of media fragmentation, united people (or men at a minimum) across race and class lines.

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