It's not a surprise at all that Dogecoin is going to enable merged mining. The developer knows that Dogecoin will get slaughtered (just like Feathercoin) if he doesn't implement it.
The best part is that he refuses to call it merged mining.
I agree with you. You cant really blame him for not wanting to use that specific term tho.
Tap dancing around certain verbiage seems par for course.
Im actually surprised it took this long...