I have often cited to Bertrand Russell's 1935 essay, The Ancestry of Fascism, where Russell lamented how difficult it had become in that time to have any meaningfully honest dialogue with people with whom one disagrees (yes, there is a philosophical passage that appears racist, but was an attempt to help people understand a concept, and Russell rejected the racist premise). The main thrust of the essay was Russell speaking about how difficult it was to have intellectual exchanges with Fascists and near-Fascists. This remains true in our time, though what bothers me deeply is one may extend that in our modern time to identitarians who play for Team Democrats, not merely reactionaries and racists among Team Republicans.
I have reached a point of despair that, in this new upcoming Biden-Harris era, I will most likely become persona non grata among the set of people who watch and rely on CNN and MSNBC for their world views. And there are so many of them in my own circle that my only hope is to say, "Young people, you will have to save us from ourselves regarding the discourse as much as saving us with respect to public policy."
Here is the proverbial straw breaking this old white cis man's back:
If anyone has a Democratic Party voter friend or family member who thinks it can only be sexism to say, maybe, Jill Biden is a bit arrogant to want to be called "doctor," such a person needs to read this WaPo article from 2017 about the media's laughing refusal to call the odious Sebastian Gorka a "doctor." After reading the article, and its links most especially, such a person should take a good look at Jill Biden's 40 page of substance dissertation, which dissertation contains banal observations, typos starting in the second sentence, and is, sadly, not even close in thoughtfulness to and depth of Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis paper at Princeton. And then have the person try to explain, with facts, not assumptions, Joe Biden's statement in 2008, reported in a Los Angeles Times article in 2009, where Biden publicly explained, with no showing in the article he was joking, his wife's apparently primary motivation for seeking the EDD. The article states:
Joe Biden, on the campaign trail, explained that his wife’s desire for the highest degree was in response to what she perceived as her second-class status on their mail. “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,” he said.
Why it can't occur to anyone that maybe Jill Biden got the Reza Aslan treatment for a PhD type of degree, based upon her husband's senatorial status (though Aslan received easy treatment based upon his previous major books and articles)? Jill Biden received her EDD from the University of Delaware, the state where Biden was senator, and where there is even a campus building named after him. Why can't it occur to anyone that maybe there is a reason newspapers have long had a practice among copy editors (not always, but most often even with Kissinger), reported in the LA Times and WaPo articles linked to above, of not calling those who have doctorates in the Humanities "doctor"?
It is also striking to me how PhDs George Will nor Paul Krugman have never demanded anyone to call them "doctor" (I know, I despise George Will and think he is a hack, but still, he is not demanding people call him "doctor"). One person said to me, well, PhDs have been around for centuries, back when medical doctors were seen as hackers and quacks. True, but even there, the PhD was in Philosophy--hence Ph for Philosophy and D for Doctorate, which, during those times, was a much broader discipline, which included mathematics, science, history, and philosophy. The propagation of credentials in sub-categories has gone to extreme lengths in recent decades, and coincided with the explosion of sub-disciplines in the humanities which had begun over the past century--as the late David Graeber pointed out, and as Irami Osei-Frimpong pointed out at the start of this week. For nearly a century, our culture reveres medical doctors, and reserves the title doctor (most of the time) for medical doctors and maybe PhD Psychologists, as the medial profession showed its effectiveness in healing people. Even the very popular television show, Friends, made a running joke out of the character Ross Geller for calling himself a "doctor" after attaining a Humanities subject PhD. What happened to all of that? Instead, we on Team D just jumped to the new party line because the attack was against someone we generally like, i.e. Jill Biden.
To me, this is like people who say they support the First Amendment when it is someone they like being attacked, but then join in the attack on those who utter speech they don't like at all. It is either you accept Gorka's and Jill Biden's demand they be called "doctor," or neither. And you better call the Society of Copy Editors to tell them to immediate end their practice of not calling those with Humanities PhDs doctors, and apologize to Gorka. Again, I find Gorka odious. And again we ought to wonder again at how the rich and/or famous get special treatment, as we compare Jill Biden's EDD dissertation with others who don't have her name pedigree or political power.
For my efforts at some historical background and demand for honest consistency, I received major FB abuse, even as I consistently said the Wall Street Journal editorial writer was a sexist and homophobe, and the National Review writer was ridiculously nasty, and clearly a partisan hack. Instead, the party lines prevailed, and I was called all sorts of names, including misogynist, and then finally told, If a woman alleges sexism, it is my obligation as an old white, cis male, to just back off--meaning, damn the inconsistencies or other protocols.
I ended my discussion in a comment saying, since an EDD is really not all that different, and even less hours needed, than my Juris Doctorate, you may as well call me "Dr." Freedman, too. I then added, most mischievously, if you don't call me "Dr.", you must be anti-Semitic. :). Meanwhile, there is the largest general strike in human history going on in India, and nobody bothered to directly comment on my posts regarding that subject at all. We discuss what the corporate controlled media wants us to discuss, and don't discuss what media doesn't want us to discuss. And what we discuss are trivial cultural issues. What we don't discuss are important socio-political-economic issues.
UPDATE December 20, 2020: Dan Nexon at the marginally left of corporate "center" (other than the more progressive labor historian Erik Loomis) blog, Lawyers, Guns, and Money (a take on the old Warren Zevon song), has opined in a very long post on the Jill Biden title designation topic. At the end of the long post, Nexon ends up admitting, after earlier reminding us how he ripped into Sebastian Gorka's PhD dissertation (and did so beautifully!), the following:
In sum, Dr. Jill Biden wants us to call her “Dr.” because she has a professional doctoral degree – an “Ed.D. in Educational Leadership.”
Some people question whether those with such degrees deserve the honorific, as the programs they attend and the theses they write tend to be far less rigorous than those associated with academic PhDs. There is no question in my mind that none of the Ed.D. theses I read would justify the conferral of a degree in political science at a reputable PhD granting institution. But no one – including, as far as I know, the people with those degrees – pretends otherwise.
It is too bad Dan can't just out and out admit Jill Biden is behaving in a pretentious way, the way most of us professionals recognize when we see Humanities PhDs demand we call them "doctors." And actually, Dan, lots of people are pretending an EDD is the same as a PhD--certainly in the Twitter feeds of millions and even spilling over into my FB page. Earlier in his post, Nexon admits what Irami Osei-Frimpong admits, which is the EDD designation is more of a vocational degree, such as my law degree (JD). That further begs the pretentiousness question, as we lawyers would laugh at any JD calling himself or herself "doctor."
In reading Nexon's detailed post, though, I was shocked to learn the National Review writer, Kyle Smith, who ripped into Jill Biden, was not behaving inconsistently. Nexon admits Smith, also in the pages of the National Review (!), had previously taken his rhetorical, snarky, polemical hammer right to Gorka's head. There was no inconsistency in style in the two Smith penned attacks, either. However, as I compared Nexon's attack on Gorka with Nexon's defense of Biden, I found different rhetorical devices are in evidence because he likes Jill Biden (as do I) and hates Gorka (as do I). To me, the two fundamental issues here are not really about Jill Biden as an individual or her particular dissertation. Instead, the issues are: (1) elitist pretentiousness and (2) easy ways for some in power positions to get titles, i.e. the "Reza Aslan" treatment applied to the wife of a prominent senator, who goes in for an EDD at the state university in the state where the spouse is senator--and even Gorka himself, as Smith and Nexon proved in their take downs of Gorka's dissertation, and his arrogant demand to be called "doctor" a few years ago.
The "She worked so hard!" argument among the Jill Biden defenders is a much more trivial and personal argument, as it is akin to the argument about the need for participation trophies. On this argument, though, Nexon's defense of Biden is helpful. Nexon directs some very snarky (and appropriate) ire against some AEI hack, who counted the typos and grammar errors in Biden's dissertation. Nexon is correct it is ridiculous for the AEI hack to criticize Jill Biden's dissertation for not using hyphens in various places, where some strict grammarian may wince. Once those "errors" are removed, there are only some typos in the dissertation. However, there are, admittedly, several typos in what is in the substance of her dissertation, which is only 40 pages. In that context, too, it is important to remember the dissertation is in double spaced type on 8 inch by 11 inch paper, which works out to be about 25-30 lines per page--typical of college undergraduate thesis papers. One may discount the typos and grammar "errors," but the short length does increase the significance of the typos. And, if the short length of 40 pages is typical for an EDD, then one understands even more what Nexon and Irami Osei-Frimpong mean when they say an EDD is not anywhere near a rigorous degree as a PhD.
It is too bad Nexon's piece is one where a lot of readers at LGM blog won't get through to the end, and instead will get lost in the critics' and defenders' personalities--thereby avoiding the substance of the arguments and evidence. This is precisely where I am so despairing of our discourse, because too many of us don't know how to separate snark from substance, personality from policy, and trivialities from materialities. We are not prepared for the global crises and issues, nor our own nation's equally existential issues, as Joe Biden prepares to formally take office as president. Too many Democrats and non-right wingers are ready for brunch, and ready to not take the actions their children and grandchildren are counting on them taking.
