Posted 1:18 PM by Floyd

Here's an example of the San Jose Mercury News' fetish for "diversity": An article on the Grammys is summarized as follows on the Merc web page:

This year's Grammy nominations reflected the diversity of the record-buying public -- in a year when record sales declined almost 11 percent.

When I was a kid, I was watching a classic sitcom like All in the Family or I Love Lucy, and a character was playing the violin incredibly badly. My father pointed out that it takes talent to make such horrible music. I feel the same way about the sentence I quoted; it takes talent to string twenty-odd words together in such a jarring manner. What does the first half of the sentence have to do with the second? How do the choices of the Grammy nominators tell us anything about the music-buying public?