An article from the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times has left me perplexed. On one level the story entitled “Punk riffs take on God and Putin” is a silly piece of journalism.

What do I mean by silly? I’m not quite sure myself. The tone of the story is half post-modernist supercilious sneer half celebrity profile for People magazine. Now these are subjective assessments of mine and I find the style in which this article was written not to my taste. But taste is neither here nor there.