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.
Firefly: Where is your husband? Mrs. Teasdale: Why, he's dead. Firefly: I'll bet he's just using that as an excuse. Mrs. Teasdale: I was with him to the very end. Firefly: Hmmph. No wonder he passed away. Mrs. Teasdale: I held him in my arms and kissed him. Firefly: Oh I see. Then, it was murder.
The funny thing about our act is that dad gets the worst of it, although I'm the one who apparently receives the bruises [...] the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment.
So Fox News is the voice of America and Obama is Stalin? Oh my God! I guess that makes me Yakov Smirnoff.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.'
You wonder sometimes how our government puts on its pants in the morning.
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