I hope he was serious here, because that is a pretty good answer to the question. In order for a player to be involved in a game, he (or she) must be faced with important issues and questions they're able to relate to. Choices in a RPG can and should be about much more than just "should I do the fetch quest or the kill quest and get item X or item Y as reward?".
I agree almost completely, except that it doesn't matter if the theme is done with proxies. If the player doesn't get the lesson with pointy ears, then s/he won't get it with darker skin. And the elves don't exist thing keeps the moron guardians off everyone's backs.