I agree, the days of automatics getting worse MPG are long gone. In fact it's shifted (haha) the other way in a lot of cases now. My 2006 Civic has better fuel economy than it's manual counterpart, mainly due to it's taller gearing. It revs at 2000rpm at 60mph, while the manual version is at 2500rpm at that speed.
My Corvette is also the same way, in the real world it gets better MPG than the 7 speed manual versions.
I have always found it easier to get better MPG with automatics because if you drive it gently the transmission will end up shifting into the next gear at a much lower rpm than you would generally allow if you were shifting it manually (perfect example is my Corvette, if you drive with a light foot the trans will shift into the next gear at 1500rpm or so, and if it were manual I would never be short shifting that low)