Moderator Action
Since this seems to have devolved into bickering between DrDeth and Munch, I am temporarily closing this until one of the P&E mods gets a chance to look at it.
Modnote
1st: I will sort out this thread shortly. Unfortunately I might have to issue warnings.
2nd: I am instructing @DrDeth and @Munch to not post any further in this thread.
3rd: I will probably reopen this in 10 minutes or so. Please be patient.
Warning for Munch for fighting with DrDeth, This passed the point of just a note, you went too far.
Along with I am instructing @DrDeth and @Munch to not post any further in this thread.
Warning for DrDeth for Fighting with Munch and acting like a jerk.
I am instructing @DrDeth and @Munch to not post any further in this thread.
etc.
oookayy… back to the OP
Leaving aside the peculiarity in everyday American English about usage of “doctor” which I’ll get back to, one has to wonder of course why the author decides to aim his critique at Jill Biden now, and not at, for example, Doctor Laura 10 years ago.
Sure, may be it’s just that Bachelor Lecturer Epstein finally found the high profile example to make his crusade about usage of “doctor” stand out.
But there is a lot about it that harkens loudly to an expectation that the spouse of the high elected official, however succesful a professional in her own right, must not call attention to that fact or to an identity distinct from that of the elected official.
Of course, with the matter about the association of the title with a specific career, one notices that “doctor” is just about the only honorific prefix used in everyday American vernacular that is an actual academic degree, as opposed to a job posting, office or professional credential, such as “Professor ____” or "Reverend _____ " or “Colonel ____” or "Senator ____ ", and that it was being applied to physicians even back when a lot of them were Bachelors of Medicine.
I say as long as she does not get around to calling herself The Doctor and bring Jodie Whitaker as a stand-in we’re cool.
Or even now; Laura’s program is still on Sirius XM.
The author actually tries to link Jill Biden to himself, and how he so magnanimously refuses to use his own title of “doctor” which was an honorary doctorate given to him. As if that’s the same thing.
It’s a rehash of the complaints about Hillary. To the right wing, the President is their lord and king, the manly leader. The First Lady is the wife, doing womanly things. Like baking cookies, hosting foreign kings, reading books to children, stopping naughty words, or cosplaying tank-corps commander. They cannot accept a woman doing things like making policy, telling us what to eat, or having uppity titles.
What a joke. That’s like saying that because I don’t wave around my Kentucky Colonelship even when in Kentucky, I should not address Michael Mullen as “Admiral”.
I can’t help but notice he didn’t complain about Dr. Martin Luther King or Dr Condelezza Rice or Dr. Henry Kissinger.
I don’t know lots of people in academia, but everyone I know with a doctorate has called themselves “doctor”. My speech teacher in college, my mother’s boyfriend ( who had a doctor of education ). I even had a psychotherapist with a non-medical doctorate that used the title.
I never thought it was weird or unusual, much less comical. I never expected anything else.
@azgem, the issue with Gorka was not whether somebody with a bona fide doctorate should be referred to as a doctor. The question was whether his dubious qualification from a Hungarian institution should be recognized as a valid PhD. Wikipedia:
A number of academics and policymakers questioned Gorka’s knowledge of foreign policy issues, his academic credentials and his professional behavior.[6][7][52][54][57][55][58] Andrew Reynolds, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, questioned the validity of Gorka’s doctoral degree, noting discrepancies between how doctorates are normally awarded and how Gorka’s was awarded. Reynolds said that the evaluation of each referee on Gorka’s PhD committee was “a page of generalized comments – completely at odds with the detailed substantive and methodological evaluations that I’ve seen at every Ph.D defence I’ve been on over the last twenty years.” According to Reynolds, at least two of the three referees had only Bachelor of Arts degrees, and one of the referees had published with Gorka previously, in violation of the academic expectation that reviewers have no personal or other form of interest in the success of a candidate’s thesis.[59] [note 1] Georgetown University associate professor Daniel Nexon reviewed Gorka’s PhD thesis, describing it as “inept” and saying “It does not deploy evidence that would satisfy the most basic methodological requirements for a PhD in the US”.[54]
One of the teachers (English or history, I forget which) at my high school…
OK, I like totally misread that last word. I have a dirty mind.
My only comment about Doctors of Education is to observe that whenever some idiotic directive comes down from the District Office instituting some new policy, a newly-minted Ed.D. is the reason.
And I’ve noticed that the defendant in every medical malpractice suit seems to be either an M.D. or a D.O. That can’t be a coincidence, I’d never trust one of those guys.
Basically it sounds like he was one step up from this
“My feeling is if you can’t heal the sick, we don’t call you doctor,” Bill Walsh, The Washington Post’s late, great copy chief, told the Los Angeles Times in 2009."
It would make it easier for people to understand what your point is if you made it explicitly.
If you’re saying WaPo has a double standard, I googled “washington post jill biden” and none of the links in the first several I went through add the honorific. Not seeing the double standard - this just looks like WaPo’s practices in how they edit their own content.
I don’t think this article gets written if Dr. Biden is male. That’s my opinion.
I think I’d always use the honorific requested by any person, although if I found the honorific to be particularly ostentatious I might voice it with obvious sarcasm. This has yet to occur in my lifetime and I’m betting it never will.
Given Dr. Biden’s background as a community college professor, there is one thing I’m curious about. I spent two or so years at a community college accumulating credits before transferring to my current 4-year university to finish my degree. Many of my instructors had PhDs but I recall almost all of them preferring the use of their first name, and begrudgingly accepting a Mr. or Mrs. They generally objected when any student attempted to use Dr.
At my current university, instructors generally seem to prefer the use of Dr. If not applicable, then they preferred the use of their last name. I haven’t seen any of them encourage the use of their first name. I wonder if there’s something about community colleges that pressures instructors to encourage the use of first names.
I doubt any of this has anything to do with the article nor would it excuse the article if it did. Just something I was wondering about.