Lest there be any mistake about the fact that the children are watching carefully, our soon-to-be-four-year-old granddaughter told us the story the other night at the dinner table about a boxing poster she had seen in Boston of two women fighters, their bodies covered with blood, wondering how they “got so hurted when they were wearing those big pillows on their hands?”

Earlier, watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon with her nine-year-old brother, she commented, “Why does it have to be funny and laughing when they’re really just being mean?”

In all the concern over the way The New Yorker has treated Barack and Michelle Obama, no one has bothered to mention, as far as I’ve heard, how that insensitive and racist caricature cover impacted their two young children. We, of course, should be paying attention to the reaction of all African American children in this regard, children who have been so inspired to have the first presidential candidate in history to whom they can look with such particular and special pride. And what are other children to make of this picture? Satire is something that from a developmental point of view comes cognitively to most children sometime after the age of seven. And that’s basic, simple satire.

For those who would counter that children don’t read The New Yorker, I can only say neither do I any more. I just canceled my subscription.