Writing and Reading

      Showing Earth from space has long been a way to show how something that might seem very significant up close is at a distance not a particularly big deal. A 1906 cartoon from the humor magazine Puck shows two Martians yawning and expressing relief that Charles Evans Hughes has been elected governor of New York. We can see fireworks marking the celebration back in New York from our point of observation on Mars. The caption reads in part, "We can get a little sleep now that we know how the New York election came out." State politics are viewed by many as dull and meaningless in comparison to national politics, but this idea can be tempered by questioning whether they are really being watched with considerable anticipation from 300 million miles away.

Which choice most effectively supports the main idea of the paragraph?