'Laughing Matters,' Not So Much

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We attended last night's profoundly weird Magazine Publishers of America panel, "Laughing Matters: Magazines Celebrate Humor," at which Jon Stewart interviewed four top editors — Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, Time's Jim Kelly, Cosmo's Kate White, and Men's Health's Dave Zinczenko — about, theoretically, the role of humor in magazines. It was really more of a free-for-all rant.

Still, we learned many things. Among them:

1. Magazine editors are not particularly funny.
2. Dave Zinczenko thinks he is funny.
3. He is not.
4. Jon Stewart is funny.
5. Jon Stewart doesn't much read magazines.

6. Neither Jon Stewart, nor the panelists, nor the audience, really knew what the event was supposed to be about.
7. This was really an event to entertain advertisers during advertising week.
8. Jon Stewart definitely didn't know that.
9. Kate White is funnier than you'd expect.
10. Jon Stewart hates Men's Health.
11. Dave Zincenko says things like, "Fit is the new rich." More than once. Unironically.
12. Dave Zincenko says things like, "Graydon Carter should have so many orgasms even Stephen Hawking couldn't count them."
13. See nos. 2 and 3.
14. Graydon Carter says it wasn't a business decision to put Paris Hilton on VF's cover. She a fascinating cultural blah-blah-blah, he says. He does not look at demographics, he says.
15. "Bullshit," yells one audience member, on behalf of everyone else.
16. Dave Zinczenko quotes Marshall McLuhan. Unironically.
17. Dave Zinczenko thinks he is wise.
18. He is not.
19. Dave Zinczenko says things like, "We worship at the altar of our readers." Unironically.
20. See nos. 17 and 18.
21. Dave Zinczenko says things like, "Three-hundred-thousand times more people are reading today than when Shakespeare was alive."
22. Dave Zinczenko makes no sense.
23. Jon Stewart hates Dave Zinczenko.
24. Jon Stewart is an even bigger lefty than you think.
25. Jon Stewart knows nothing about how the magazine business works.
26. Dave Zinczenko quotes Freud. Unironically.
27. See nos. 17, 18, 22, and 23.
28. Dave Zinczenko is a tool.
29. Jon Stewart is funny.

[Photo via AdFreak.]