Let's see how quickly Dwight has a submission picked for the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

by Ken

"Got this e-mail the other day," writes New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, adding, "It’s not the first of its kind."

This reader is completely non-plussed by the premature deadlines for your cartoon contest, in that they are dated one day before the cover publication date of the magazine, which in my case is often not delivered in the mail until too late to enter.

What exactly is the point of this kind of discouragement to your enthusiastic subscribers? I hope and pray you will not ignore this complaint in an all too common post-modern electronic game of passive aggression.

Dwight (last name not given, because I forgot it)

Wouldn't you like to see our Mr. Bob wriggle his way out of this one? The contest deadline "one day before the cover publication date of the magazine"! Well, it turns out that he doesn't so much wriggle his way out of this one as wriggle his way around it.

First he stalls:

Actually, a postmodern electronic game of passive aggression is now available as an app. You can try to download it, but it takes an endless amount of time to load, flashing you the message “I’m loading. Give me a minute, or, if you can’t wait, cancel it if you want—I won’t be mad. Really.”

Hey there, Mr. Bob, focus! Remember? The contest deadline "one day before the cover publication date of the magazine"? Mailed copy of magazine delivered too late to enter? Sound familiar? Huh?

Okay, here goes. "Look," he says, "the short answer to this problem is that there is no problem."

You can enter the Cartoon Caption Contest online (which is the only way you can enter it) at the stroke of midnight Eastern Standard Time. You don’t have to wait for it to appear in your mailbox.

Note that what he means by "you don’t have to wait for it to appear in your mailbox" is: You're a damn fool if you wait for it to appear in your mailbox, and there isn't a damn thing I can do for you. Actually go back to where he says, "You can enter the Cartoon Caption Contest online," and then immediately adds parenthetically what he really means: that you have to it online, there's no other damn way of doing it. Viewed this way, Mr. Bob isn't so much helping Dwight as taunting him. I suppose it's fair to note that Dwight posed his question via e-mail, and so if he can do that, presumably he can check out the Cartoon Contest online and enter it online -- again remembering that he has to enter it online.

At this point, claiming that "I really do want to help," Mr. Bob goes into a "step-by-step guide for all the Dwights out there. The first two steps are fairly straightforward, at least once Dwight accepts if he waits for his mailed subscription copy of the magazine, he's cooked.

1. Go to http://contest.newyorker.com/

2. Look at the cartoon there, and come up with an ingenious caption.

An alert observer might point out that going to the Contest page might not be as automatic as Mr. Bob is suggesting, if Dwight has used up his month's worth of free articles. In theory, of course, as a subscriber Dwight has unlimited access to the newyorker.com website, but as I've pointed out, this isn't necessarily the case. I (to pick a random example) am unable to sign in to my account in Safari or Firefox, and while I have the word of Sharon in Customer Care (I think it was Sharon; I'll be damned if I'm going to dig out the e-mails to rub my own nose in the futility) that work is proceeding on a fix for the Safari problem, a fat lot of good that does me while work on this massive project proceed.

Okay, even though one might assume that a higher percentage of New Yorker subscribers than of other demographic groups use Macs and are trying to connect via Safari or Firefox, let's assume that Dwight has snuck around this hurdle and can actually get onto the contest page. Presumably, he at least thinks he's got No. 2 covered as well. If he didn't think he could come up with an ingenious caption, he wouldn't have gotten involved with this whole problem.

(In which connection I might point out that, at least in the judgment of the judges, Dwight is very likely kidding himself about the ingenuity of his putative caption submissions. Just think of all the enterers who go thousands of contests without getting a peep out of the judges. Remember the experience of the late Roger Ebert? It could be that Dwight's logistical obstacle to entering the contest has spared him countless hours of heartache.)

If Dwight gets through No. 2, No. 3 is a virtual gimme:

3. Write the caption in the box provided—just one, please. Multiple entries are not permitted, and fray our nerves.

After No. 3, however, the steps get trickier -- mostly having to do with either having or having to establish a contest-entering account -- that entail not only Nos. 4, 4a, and 4b, but a whole bunch of other things that don't have numbers, and include a section of "Potential problems," and in the extreme case we seem to wind up on "the password-reset page."

At this point, says Mr. Bob, "If all this doesn’t work, contact Dwight. He’s got it down pat by now." Maybe, maybe not. It seems to me entirely possible that by now Dwight has given up and is spending his time playing online poker.

Okay, it's possible that I sound a bit bitter. This could be because I am a bit bitter. I hope Dwight is making out better than I am.

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