If anything, the article reads as the opposite of pretentious to me: it makes it clear that monster trucking isn't just brainless amusement for inbred yokels, but a sport where things like the exact composition of dirt is critically important.
The whole article reads to me with the same smug superiority as an Onion article about, well, self-described sophisticates enjoying things with a smug sense of superiority[0]. The thing curiously absent from the article is any sort of enthusiasm for the subject matter. Its all very clinical, and seems at best bemused about other people's enthusiasm, without anything to suggest why that enthusiasm might be justified.
0. https://www.theonion.com/ill-try-anything-with-a-detached-ai...
Farmers.
Gardeners.
Potters.
Kids who have ever been in the wrong sandbox.
Sorry, I think your interpretation is incorrect.
There's a lot of words expended on how the people who are already fans get excited about some event. But the thing I was waiting for was the writer to express some excitement himself. Its always held at arms' length. Bits like
>The appeal has a certain timelessness: people have always liked really big stuff, particularly of the unnecessary variety. Stonehenge, pyramids, colossi, Costco. For perhaps obvious reasons, this is usually a male impulse.
or more damningly
>It was the experience of seeing something amazing and slightly ridiculous, something you’d have never thought of yourself, like a dog juggling knives. I understood the hugging impulse.
and
>As they rumbled by, grown men yelled at the top of their lungs, and a bachelorette party in front of Nudie’s Honky Tonk took videos.
really make it clear that the writer wants us to know he's not one of them, and you, the average New Yorker reader, should not try to find common ground with these people. He doesn't change his tune until the final segment, where he drives one of these trucks himself. Until then, its just bemused descriptions of other people's excitement, and its hard not to hear some second-hand embarrassment in those descriptions.
The article never made reference to "inbred yokels". It didn't have to. It can couch its descriptions in the language of coastal elites who supposedly know more of wine and polo than they do of simple things like truck rallies. And while it's ostensibly explaining how "sophisticated" the sport is, the readers will fully understand the "isn't just brainless amusement for inbred yokels" part.
I wouldn't characterize my response as one of outrage. But I do find it off-putting and pretentious.
If you let someone make you feel guilty about the things you like, then there's a bit of self reflecting that should be done.
For someone wanting plain language, it's surprising that you say "New York Jews" this way.
I think of wealthy business owners on the east and west coasts. Venture capitalists. Managers at software companies. Politicians. Just high paid and/or influential people who think highly of themselves and others in their cliques.
Let's not swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction either...