This is Your Brain Dribbling Out of Your Ears

Extremely irksome New York Times pop music critic Kelefa Sanneh is seriously worried about something.

From today's paper:

There have been ominous signs for months.

Really? Do you mean Michael Chertoff's gut? Perhaps the new NIE estimate?

Like the pair of flip-flops that showed up in the mail, courtesy of some record label looking to influence the outcome. And the half-hearted arguments among friends who seemed to be merely going through the motions. And the stagnant pop charts, which all but eliminated suspense.

Oh, those. Right, scary. What else?

Taken together, these and other omens point to one sad conclusion:

Good lord, man, don't leave us hanging like that. What is it that you're getting at?

It’s probably time to stop talking about the so-called Song of the Summer.



Words fail me.

There's more here, if you can stand it, but be warned -- it gets worse.

I'm sorry to keep flogging a dead equine where Sanneh is concerned, but c'mon: granted the Times' pop coverage has always been, shall we say, uneven. But this kind of lovesick puppy fanboy gush was absolutely unprecedented before Sanneh's tenure, and one can only assume it's part of the same ongoing institutional nervous breakdown at the Old Grey Lady that has given us the WMD fantasies of Judith Miller or David Brooks putting George W. Bush and Leo Tolstoy together in the same sentence.