Competition time!

[Cain]

This is our chance to infiltrate the Washington Post.  No, really.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/pundit-contest/index.html

Here's your chance to put your opinions to the test — and win the opportunity to write a weekly column and a launching pad for your opinionating career!

Start making your case.
Use the entry form to send us a short opinion essay (400 words or less) pegged to a topic in the news and an additional paragraph (100 words or less) on yourself and why you should win. Entries will be judged on the basis of style, intelligence and freshness of argument, but not on whether Post editors agree or disagree with your point of view. Entry deadline: Oct. 21, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Naturally they're going to hire a teabagger, but you shouldn't let that dissuade you.

[LMNO]

We should send the "spider" posts.

[Cain]

Get it down to 400 words and its done.

I'm think a Spider Jerusalem reaction to the news that the Boy Prince wishes to extend the provisions of the Patriot Act.  In other words, 400 words of "fuck".

[AFK]

I'm just going to write an opinion piece on how great Eugene Robinson is and see where that gets me.  

[Captain Utopia]

Any ideas of how to improve our chances? I'm assuming that the evaluation criteria of "style, intelligence and freshness of argument" are secondary to whatever they think will sell more advertising space, as the criteria are vague enough to shoehorn whatever they pick into. E.g. a teabagger character who still thinks Obama is Hitler, but who has a few original perspectives on it?

[Cain]

Read every Fred Hiatt op-ed of the last three years, and condense it into 400 words.

The WaPo does not like dissenters on the editorial side of things.

[LMNO]

"Improve our chances"?


You've never read the Washington Post, have you?

[Cain]

To be fair, they allow token dissenters, like Ezra Klein and Colman McCarthy in.  Sometimes.

[Captain Utopia]

"Improve our chances"?

You've never read the Washington Post, have you?

Nope. Except for the occasional online article. Definitely not enough to have any clue as to what sort of disguise would be required for infiltration.

[Suu]

I'm forwarding this to my writing major-adopted brother, Max, who I often enlist to help do some trolling. He's reenacting the Trial of Galileo in a class right now in which he's playing the role of the prosecuting cardinal, so he'll enjoy this.

[Iason Ouabache]

Are you planning on doing a serious entry for this, Cain? I think you've got the skill to write for a major organization. Not the Washington Post obviously. They'd probably make you bow down to a shrine of Sun Myung Moon before hiring you.

[Telarus]

Are you planning on doing a serious entry for this, Cain? I think you've got the skill to write for a major organization. Not the Washington Post obviously. They'd probably make you bow down to a shrine of Sun Myung Moon before hiring you.

Emperor Moon,  .

What about a collaborative essay under a pen name?