That's not how I read it. The gist I took was that Andy Warhol deserves fair use because the art establishment has consistently viewed his works, the Prince piece included, as revolutionary. And to state the bloody obvious, if his work was not transformative, it never would have been seen as revolutionary.
that is not at all obvious to me--what is revolutionary in Warhol is not the art but the way people see it, like found art. but if you "found" the art in someone else's comic, and aren't substantially changing the actual image--the actual appearance of the work, the only part that could reasonably be described as being ripped off from someone else... it can be revolutionary without having meaningfully transformed the original, just the way people see it.
disclaimer: I don't have a lot of time for that kind of art, which no doubt biases me.
However, the court essentially boxed itself into weighing in only one the meaning of factor one, so it tries to reach the decision by half-importing factor four (the degree to which it substitutes the original) into factor one analysis. Furthermore, it ties itself into a knot to argue why Andy Warhol's use in the original prints was transformative and overall fair use, but the use in the newspaper article wasn't transformative.
The dissent manages to be even worse by, as you point out, essentially arguing that everything Andy Warhol does deserves to be fair use because it's Andy Warhol. Oh, and taking as many potshots at the majority opinion as is possible. As bad as the majority opinion was, the dissent is even worse.