Just over a quarter-century ago, I was a college freshman employed by the theater department’s scene shop. Though I was a willing worker, surely no one would hire me to swing a hammer today, barring a deportation effort so vast that even MAGA minds are blown. What I did possess, in some abundance, was a personality that invited sarcasm from my superiors. I don’t recall what stupid question of mine provoked the following. I know only that a bit of folk wisdom nudged through the conversational thicket to change my life.
“Never show an idiot unfinished work.” Perhaps I had asked why a scenery flat was unpainted or why the stage lights weren’t covering a particular actor’s mark. In any case, the shop foreman’s retort came down like a thunderbolt, if a thunderbolt could be said to drip with withering disdain. From that point forward, I kept my own counsel “in the office” and tried my best not to comment on projects underway. Yet, a new idea had become part of my mental architecture. In this instance, I had been the idiot. But wasn’t the world, after all, full of them?
The dictum has its uses in both the professional and personal realms. As a writer for this and other magazines, I have learned to guard early drafts like a dragon hoards rubies. No, the version begun this morning is not the finished piece. Those underlinings represent words that must be replaced with something sharper. No, relatedly, you may not read my novel-in-progress. Even one’s own judgment is a dangerous thing too early in the proceedings, whether or not the deadline clock is ticking. Some writers drink to blur the cold-eyed superego’s vision. I repeat, mantra-like, my humble theme.
“Never show an idiot unfinished work.” If memory serves, I introduced my children to the phrase while helping my wife put up a Christmas tree. They were 4 and 6 at the time and wanted to know why the blasted thing leaned. Since then, the expression has become a family shibboleth, both blessing and curse. A just-assembled casserole doesn’t look right? “Never show an idiot …” — well, you get the idea. The lawn, three days after seeding, still has thin spots? Sometimes a raised eyebrow is enough to convey the message.
Looking to history, one finds countless moments deserving of the refrain. Margaret Thatcher, insisting in 1981 that her free-market reforms would bear fruit, must have thought or said the line to recalcitrant aides by the handful. Lincoln’s 1864 reelection campaign might as well have used it as a slogan. (“Don’t Change Horses Midstream, and Never Show an Idiot Unfinished Work!”) For my money, the finest illustration of the maxim is the Great Wall of China, which deterred minor raids as early as the third century B.C. Nevertheless, one can almost hear some Qin Dynasty nitwit harping on about it: “Why are we hauling so much stone and gravel to the middle of nowhere?”
Examined from a certain angle, all millenarian projects make at least implicit use of our motto. What was QAnon if not a promise that we idiots would one day see much unfinished work completed? Doesn’t our proverb linger in the penumbras of the claim that true Communism has never been tried? As I write these words, Zohran Mamdani is being elected mayor of New York City, an outcome that would have startled even Karl Marx, that great believer in historical inevitability. Mamdani’s voters will come to hate him in the end, before turning him, like Bill de Blasio, into a trivia answer. In the meantime, he will govern by our precept. “Yes, the city is a dumpster fire now, but give our policies time to …” et cetera.
Like George Costanza doing the opposite — and there goes the sell-by date of that reference — I embrace our adage as a religion. For this week’s sermon, turn to an obscure passage in Luke, in which a Pharisee grumbles that Herod’s Temple has too much scaffolding. Next week: The plague of frogs doesn’t quite seem to have done the job. One can make some version of that joke for hours if one has enough Sunday School under one’s belt. But would you believe that there’s some truth to it? “Behold, I am making all things new,” declares Our Lord. “He means this election cycle, right?” we answer. Never show an idiot unfinished work.
I would like to say that I learned a lesson in the scene shop all those years ago. Mr. Burke, if you’re reading this, I haven’t repeated the error. In truth, however, we are all idiots floundering about, doing our level best with the fragmentary information we have. Any lessons about perspective, humility, and the dangers of jumping to conclusions will have to reckon with that fact.
Keep my work-in-progress hidden? Yes, I believe I will. One never knows when some fool will come along and get the wrong idea about it.
Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.
