You get the joke if you have enlightened ears, indeed. You can fit the domain of people who appreciate Ligeti's musical humor and relate it to Mozart on the head of a pin. This is a vastly smaller group than the domain who get the joke of radicals Barack and Michelle burning the flag on the cover of the New Yorker, and we know how that went down. Leonard Bernstein gave a refreshing series of lectures some 40+ years ago that warned of musical elites killing classical music with snotty academic perspectives. The Slate audience could use a bit more Bernstein and less Swafford today as well.