In our current societal context, I think this is correct. If there is a circumstance in which any title is appropriate, if “Dr.” is available, then it’s belittling to use “Mr.,” “Ms.,” or “Mrs.”
Low enough to be owned by Rupert Murdoch.
True, but even after News Corp bought it back in 2007, it seemed like the WSJ remained a basically respectable paper specializing in Business. I haven’t really looked at the paper in about 6 years. An editorial like this wouldn’t have been printed in 2014 from what I recall.
Good point. I suppose I’m speaking mostly about truly social / informal settings, whereas Mr. WSJ Turdbird was working more in the formal / official setting.
So do you think the Whitehouse should refer to her as “Mrs. Biden” or Dr. Biden"?
I can see saying that Dr. Or Mrs. Biden could be pretentious and “Jill” is preferred. I don’t see a circumstance where “Mrs.” is not pretentious but “Dr” is.
Dr Biden. She earned it, and as some posters and women in the media have said, it’s an important message to get out there.
Another vote for this. My father, an MD, wasn’t a sticker for being called “Doctor,” but he did not like being called “mister.” First name was fine, for “Doc” even. But never mister.
How come no one remembers the Maestro episode of Seinfeld?
Jerry is frustrated that Elaine and George have no problem with Bob’s insistence on being called “Maestro” instead of his real name
Who is calling you by name in the grocery store?
The cashier sometimes does after scanning my loyalty card. I assume it must be company policy.
I run into people that I know at the grocery store all the time.
A little less now with COVID and all, but still do.
And in those situations, it would be very weird for them to call me by anything other than my first name.
To analogize, it would be like someone insisting that they shouldn’t call you captain, as you are not a in charge of a naval vessel.
When Dr. Biden crosses paths with friends and neighbors at the grocery store, do we have any reason to believe that they don’t call her Jill.
The pro-doctor side is not saying that she should never be addressed as Jill in informal settings. We’re saying that she should not be addressed or referred to as Mrs. Biden in any setting. Mrs. Biden and Ms. Biden are simply incorrect.
Nope.
Agreed.
It’s another bit of “proof” of
Biden’s corruption! 
. Obviously Dr Biden just threw her paper together any old which way and bribed the school to grant her a doctorate!
You must have meant hired an illegal Immigrant to put together her dissertation any old way…
and then Elaine calls him by his first name when they are getting intimate, and he corrects her.
Some become lawyers. We’ve got a couple of them in the patent law division of the law firm at which I work. Also some PhDs. So their JD degrees don’t entitle them to be called “Doctor,” but their other degrees do.
“Entitle” ? I think if someone claims entitlement, they’ve lost the argument.
You mean he has an honorary doctorate. There’s no such thing as an honorary PhD. People who have honorary doctorates have a “Doctor of Letters” degree.
A PhD is the most difficult of all the doctorates (including MDs, there’s an argument, because MDs are artificially made difficult with grueling schedules for third-year students and interns, but it doesn’t have to be that way). People with PhD have had to propose, have accepted, gathered a committee for, written (which can take years-- just the writing, not the research, took my mother two years, and everyone commented on her speed), and successfully defended, a dissertation, and that’s all after the coursework. And candidates are on their own to procure their research and travel grants. My father earned his PhD before he was 30, and was considered a wunderkind.
This is why you sometimes hear a distinction made: two ministers may both be doctors, but one has a D.Div, and one has a PhD in Theology, or Religious Studies.
Question about the bolded part: is that true across all fields? In engineering school, we had one professor who was a Doctor of Science.(the others’ doctorates were Ph.D.s) and he was widely considered more prestigious. Are there even D.Sc. degrees awarded in non-science fields?
ETA: for some reason the bolded part didn’t show up in my post. I was referring to:
A PhD is the most difficult of all the doctorates