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There comes a moment in everyone's life when one has to consider: “Is everything I know and believe to be true actually so?  Have I been the victim of a colossal fraud?”

That moment happened on Saturday evening for James Brindley Madison III, editor-in-chief of the *Big Loft Bulletin.*

Mr. Madison was 63, and out of that line that contained both James Madison and, of importance in Lofton County, VA, several daughters of the Lofton and Slocum families.  The idea that he was not among America's naturally superior men had never once occurred to him until that Saturday.

There was another good reason as well: he was the undisputed head of the press in Lofton County.  Local television news still took its cues from his paper, for of course he ran a superior news shop befitting his position in life and his ideals – in addition, his was one of the few newspapers in the country that also dominated the online news cycle in its region, for Mr. Madison had embraced the internet the moment it had arrived.

Still, for all that, Mr. Madison at last had his moment, Saturday evening when his reporters and editors reported the same thing they had been reporting for 24 hours.

“What do you mean?” he shouted.  “We are a staff of 95 of the best journalists in the nation – certainly the best in the state!  What do you mean, while that black rag the *Lofton County Free Voice* is practically a fly un-swatted on the walls of our friends and having them pulled from their homes like common criminals – *what do you mean you can't find Henry Fitzhugh Lee and get the interview about what happened Friday?*”

Everyone's humility moment comes in a different way... .

**Photo by fran hogan on Unsplash**