The New Yorker Caption Contest is a sham
This is old news by now, but I often find it hard to let things go, as indifferent or argumentative friends and ex-girlfriends alike can surely confirm. Especially things that seemed so right at the time, as this once did.
[A word of introduction -- The New Yorker (best magazine ever, regardless of your geographic location) has been hosting a cartoon caption contest. For the past year or two the last page of each weekly issue displays a non-captioned cartoon. Readers then submit captions (which I did within the allowed timeframe), the entries are rated by unbiased judges at The New Yorker (or so they claim), and ultimately the top 3 captions are selected (or so they assert) and displayed in a later issue (can't argue with that). Readers select their favorite caption of the 3 (true) and vote online (yep). The votes are counted (or so they profess) and a winner is crowned (I wouldn't really know).]
Tell me then, if they've passed over something great with my submission for the Cartoon Caption Contest # 86, 12 February 2007.
The cartoon:
My caption:
"Stay the course, eh?"
I know.
How a magazine with such taste and perspective could've overlooked this, and not even given it a spot in the final 3 is beyond me. Maybe they found fault in the Canadian-ish intonation of the hero. Maybe they thought it too obvious. We'll probably never know. And so the caption for this cartoon will remain, for all of history, the honorable if wordy: "I support our troops as much as the next guy, but do we have to let them play through?"
Congratulations Charlie Freund of Glendale, Calif., but you are no Freund of mine.
3 comments:
For what it's worth, I like your caption much better!
Kris
it's true. you were robbed.
i'm charlie freund, and i think my caption was much, much better. eric, your caption, albeit short if nothing else, lacked an urbane quality that New Yorker readers require. Let's not even mention the fact that you really don't even feel the emotion of the two golfers. And let's certainly not mention that while your caption relied on a pun in order to be anything more than simply words on a page, said pun neither captured the horrors of this war (or one could argue, any war) nor the inherent laid-back ease of a friendly round of golf.
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