98% of the people who get the magazine say they read the cartoons first - and the other 2% are lying.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that cartoons are the most popular part of a magazine, and it pokes fun at honesty in reading preferences.
David Remnick's quote highlights the universal appeal of cartoons in magazines by humorously implying that nearly everyone prioritizes reading them. It addresses the tendency of people to admit to reading the more serious articles in magazines while secretly enjoying the light-hearted cartoons, presenting a comical take on preferences and honesty in readership.
In practice
In a speech about media consumption habits, one could use this quote to illustrate how humor captures audience attention.
The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes.
Everybody has a cartoon of themselves. Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.
Every good journalist is aware that his trade may one day go the way of phrenology-and, what's more, the population will hardly protest the extinction.
Journalism, some huge percentage of it, should be devoted to putting pressure on power, on nonsense, on chicanery of all kinds and if that's going to invite a lawsuit, well, bring it on.
In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'
A lot of people who claim they're political comedians are just comedians who have opinions. But they stop being funny the minute they give their opinions.
I'm not here to affect you politically or socially. I'm here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that whatever you say to them, they always purr.
The truth is, Pavlov's dog trained Pavlov to ring this bell just before the dog salivated.
All these jokes have been pre-approved as funny by me.
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