Can anyone tell me why there’s a cartoon in the middle of the articles on The New Yorker’s site?

I went to this page to read a piece on Ken Burns’ The War, which I’ve been sporadically watching this week, and was completely turned off by the comic.  Does it add any value whatsoever? If the article was meant to be comical, maybe I could understand (even though the cartoon wasn’t funny).  Do they think I need to be distracted while reading about WWII?

This is probably one reason why I don’t read The New Yorker.  Boo.