I think in talking about programming, we are often hindered by the fact that it is much more complicated than our brains can handle. Our only choices are to write novel length treatments of real programs or short story length posts about a toy program, or just the tiniest piece of a real program.
Which is all to say, as sick of hearing about Fizzbuzz as I am, I'm glad there are silly little examples like it that we all know. Even though it was ostensibly about interviewing, that was a much clearer introduction to monoids than most. I think it was largely because it was in reference to Fizzbuzz: something very concrete with which we're all familiar.
Too many introductions to Haskell's abstractions are too abstract. Good on the author for finding away around that.