I doubt I'd call popular culture an important problem. (And I was, fairly clearly I thought, talking about pretty much the entire decade, not just two guys at the end of it.) Except possibly as a threat. It is one that involves moderate quantities of money sloshing back and forth. But, more importantly, undue influence. Most recently, it got its hooks into things that actually affect the rest of the world. I submit that understanding how an industry that small can punch so ridiculously far above its economic weight may be useful. (Not that PM/crit is fully up to that task yet, and I'm greatly disappointed by that, but it's the right direction.)

As my comment notes, it's not something to bother with unless you're interested already, but Luke's invocations of straw postmodernists do come across as declaring ignorance as social signaling rather than as saying something that helpfully places these fields in their contexts.