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We all know the type: the person who demands, “Do you know who I am?” and insists on standing on every pettifogging point of ceremony. Occasionally, it’s amusing, such as when Prince Charles gently chided Molly Meldrum’s reference to “Your mum”, with, “You mean, Her Majesty the Queen”. Most often, though, it’s just annoying and boorish.
Especially minor academics who have a screaming fit of the vapours should any of we peasants forget to address them as “doctor”. An Australian philosophy academic generated a storm of ridicule when she unleashed on a hapless flight attendant who neglected to bow and scrape appropriately and address the precious academic as “Dr.”
You can tell someone is smarting from an inferiority complex when he insists on being addressed as “Dr.” on the basis of holding an academic doctorate rather than being a physician. Ph.D. holders who have genuine accomplishments don’t make you call them “Doctor,” which is why you never hear about “Dr. Paul Krugman” and “Dr. George Will.” None of the professors I knew at Yale, even the ones who were eminent in their fields, insisted on the title[…]
Insisting on being called “Doctor” when you don’t heal people is, among most holders of doctorates, seen as a gauche, silly, cringey ego trip.
Enter “Dr.” Jill Biden, the aspirant US First Lady. Mrs. Biden likes to be addressed as “Dr.” Biden. Beginning with a snarky op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Biden’s academic credentials have come under considerable scrutiny.
It might generously said that “Dr.” Biden is putting on airs, somewhat.
“Dr.” Jill Biden […] doesn’t even hold a Ph.D. but rather a lesser Ed.D., something of a joke in the academic world. President-elect Joe Biden once explained that his wife sought the degree purely for status reasons: “She said, ‘I was so sick of the mail coming to Sen. and Mrs. Biden. I wanted to get mail addressed to Dr. and Sen. Biden.’ That’s the real reason she got her doctorate,” Joe Biden has said.
So, Biden indeed sought the credential solely for the sake of being able to flaunt it. But what about its merit?
As for its quality, well. She got it from the University of Delaware, whose ties to her husband […] run so deep that it has a school of public policy named after him […] The only risk to the University of Delaware was that it might strain its collective wrist in its rush to rubber-stamp her doctoral paper.
Them’s pretty strong words. Which is more than might be said for Biden’s dissertation, by all accounts.
My friends, I have read this document in its entirety and it is so equally lacking in rhetorical force, boldness of conception, and original research that it amounts to a triple null set, a vacuum inside a blank inside an abyss […] Gene Simmons has a better claim to be a Doctor of Love than Jill Biden to be a Doctor of Education; after all, Simmons has spent a lifetime demonstrating mastery of his field. As for Biden, she has spent a lot of time teaching remedial English to slow learners in community colleges.
Which is not an ignoble pursuit in itself. In fact, it’s a rather worthy career, I would argue – one which, frankly, Biden ought to be proud enough of. Putting on airs and graces and insisting on being addressed as “Dr.” when you’re not a medical doctor speaks to an inferiority complex.
Others have pointed out the the glaring typos and malapropisms which pepper her dissertation. “The needs of the student population are often undeserved.” “In an effort to obtain upward mobility, returning GIs, [sic] took the opportunity to enroll in college.” “The first sacrifice has to be school; hence, student retention rates skyrocket if there are no safeguards in place to help students cope.”
As Kyle Smith waspishly observed in National Review, “Biden is a writing teacher in dire need of a writing tutor”.
Now, all this might be dismissed as just another press pile-on, a conservative version of Trump Derangement Syndrome, if it didn’t speak volumes about the mainstream media’s glaring bias.
Much of the press plays along, addressing Jill Biden as “Dr. Biden” even when actual medical doctors are referred to without the honorific if they are not currently practicing. Eminent pediatric neurosurgeon and HUD secretary Ben Carson is now “Mr. Carson” to the New York Times, but the same paper refers to Mrs. Biden as “Dr. Biden.”
Yahoo! News
Then again, they’ve been calling her husband “president-elect” since the early hours of 4th November.
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