Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
Interpretation
Profitability indicates a broader appeal than claimed special interest.
Fran Lebowitz highlights the irony in the concept of 'special-interest' publications by pointing out that if such publications are profitable through advertising and readership, their niche appeal may not be as unique or specialized as they suggest. This commentary invites reflection on the nature of interest and profit in media, suggesting that true 'special interests' may often struggle to find significant financial backing.
In practice
In a discussion about media's role in society.
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
You should make it hard on yourself to write so youβre easier to read.
I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word - politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
I must take issue with the term 'a mere child,' for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.
I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.
Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty.
I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human β I only love to be so.
While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.
It was very different when the masters of science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.
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