This is exactly why I love the New Yorker cartoons :)

Reading the New Yorker is, to quite an extent, like reading the Scientific American, in that I need to have a minimum level of literacy to be able to read and understand the materials there.  And reading them is not any casual business either--requires attention.  I love the New Yorker because I get actively engaged in the process.

And, here is the best part: that active engagement part is applicable even when it comes to most of the cartoons, which, BTW, are the ones I scan through first.

Take the following cartoon, for instance:

This one requires cultural-literacy of sorts.  This cartoon will not, get across to most people who might not know anything about baseball--like how I was before I got to this country.  Back in India, the joke here would have simply sailed passed me like, ahem, a wild pitch :)

But, having been acculturated, and knowing the little bit that I do about baseball, made me pause for a sec, grasp the situation and then chuckle. The dog excitedly waiting with a leash and looking towards the pitcher who is not in the picture, with the catcher .. nah, I will let the magazine's cartoon editor explain it::

[If] you don’t know what sign catchers give when they want an intentional walk, or recognize that a dog wagging his tail often means he wants go for a walk, you won’t get this cartoon. And explaining it to you, as I have, won’t make it any funnier.

More here on my cartoon mania.