The New York Times Doesn’t Know Shit About “Poptimism”
Over the weekend, The New York Times Magazine saw fit to give space over to some complaining about how pop music coverage focused too much on, well, the popular stuff. That the author of said piece—verified Pazz & Jop voter Saul Austerlitz—had written a book on the sitcom, perhaps 20th-century America’s most cravenly pop artform, is not the punchline, although it could make for a good one. Instead, the piece was a hundreds-word whinge about how writers just weren’t paying enough attention to the National; it was at times incoherent and at other times flat-out wrong, and it showed if nothing else a lack of curiosity about finding solid coverage of left-field artists, something which the internet’s vast space is hardly lacking.
