That one pristine moment where I could have best gauged my own personal gut reaction to the cartoon (and yes, it’s always a cartoon you know you’re getting with a New Yorker), without the tainted hindsight of a media-thrashed controversy, was stolen from me; now I’ll never know what I’d have felt or how I’d have reacted if I’d just pulled the issue, unsuspectingly, out of the mailbox and had a moment to react and process what I saw then, free from prior and outside, even excessive, influence. I’ll simply never know my own visceral POV on the matter. Would I have been angry? Sad? Dismayed? LMAO? Hard to say; the moment was never there for me as the last place I inhabit is a media vacuum.

Media overkill sure can steal our own best insights and judgement right out from under our very own nose.