Thursday, May 19, 2005
(6:45 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Douglas Feith is an idiot
The New Yorker recently ran an article on Feith, which was actually pretty even-handed. The title, however, apparently irked Feith, as evidenced by his letter to the magazine, which appeared in the May 23, 2004, issue. To wit:The title of Jeffrey Goldberg's article about me alludes, I suppose, to the famous line "A little learning is a dangerous thing" ("A Little Learning," May 9th). This tickled me. As it happens, I spent a delightful portion of a recent vacation reading the Alexander Pope poem from which that line comes.This from the first and only Under Secretary of Defense to have been called, on the record, by a general, "The fucking stupidest guy in the world." I don't even know where to begin. He was reading Alexander Pope while on vacation? Who brings the Norton Anthology of British Literature to the beach? I am startled by the sheer mediocrity of a man who would spend his vacation musing over Alexander Pope. I am trying to think of a poet the choice of whom would indicate more slavish devotion to the "great books" mentality, but I simply cannot: Pope is just boring. Rhymed couplets suck. Dragging out the "Essay on Criticism" to come up with some too-clever-by-half letter to the New Yorker, to dispute an article that was actually astoundingly generous to him considering the source -- that really sucks. He was probably on the clock when he wrote it, too. My tax money would have contributed to the writing of that letter, in a scenario in which I had ever made so much money that I actually would have had to pay federal taxes.
The poem, entitled "An Essay on Criticism," has advice both for those who do and for those who criticize. Pope tells the former to curb their pride ("So vast is art, so narrow human wit"), respect ancient wisdom, and eschew "false eloquence" [juxtaposition in original -- Ed.]. As for critics, he warns:But you who seek to give and merit fame,I have pondered your editors' choice of title. Were they sneering, or making a self-deprecatory joke? Are they familiar with the Pope poem, or only with the disembodied line? Did they shoot at me and catch the arrow in their own backside? A little learning can be a dangerous thing.
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.
Douglas J. Feith
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Washington, D.C.
(I quietly note that my first published work was a letter to the editor of the New York Times, criticizing Douglas Feith for opining that the lesson of 9/11 was that terrorists wanted to obtain weapons of mass destruction. I contended that that was the exact opposite of any lesson that could be rationally drawn from the events of that tragic day.)
