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.
It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
In high school, I was the class comedian as opposed to the class clown. The difference is the class clown is the guy who drops his pants at the football game, the class comedian is the guy who talked him into it.
Yes, but the difference is that when you're dead and somebody yells, 'Everybody up, it's morning,' it's very hard to find your slippers.
Now, for my younger viewers out there, a book is something we used to have before the internet. Itβs sort of a blog for people with attention spans.
PALM, n. A species of tree . . . of which the familiar "itching palm" ("Palma hominis") is most widely distributed . . . . This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver.
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