One thing that occured to me is why the NME even bothers writing about Morrissey these days. As far as I know (I haven't read it for almost a decade) they no longer cover his loose contemporaries like Nick Cave, Paul Weller, The Cure etc- or indeed Julian Cope- all of whom are still making and selling records and have as high a profile as Moz. Surely Morrissey means as little or less to the NMEs target demographic as the aforementioned artists?
I can only put it down to some sort of residual symbiotic obsession between the two. It would be poetic justice indeed if Moz's lawsuit finally put the pathetic shambling corpse of the once-great NME out of its misery at last.