The Jill Biden furor is about more than titles. It touches on gender, race and civility.

[marmar]

The Jill Biden furor is about more than titles. It touches on gender, race and civility.
It's simple: Call people by the title they prefer. I still have letters addressed to Mom as 'Mrs. Richard Petrow' — by her own mother! It steamed her.

Steven Petrow Opinion contributor


(Detroit Free Press) Over the weekend I was angsting about how to address the last of my holiday cards. What’s the proper form for a same-sex couple? Or a modern widow, even a divorcee? And what about when one spouse has a professional title — like reverend, judge or doctor — like my friends, Dr. Amanda Cook and her husband, Ian Cook. Doing this correctly is not always easy or intuitive, which is one reason why titles have generally gone the way of dinosaurs. Then there’s the other reason: Americans like the fiction that all people are created equal. A title — or what’s also known as an honorific — only disrupts that fantasy.

In the midst of sealing and stamping the cards, the internet rightly blew up when Joseph Epstein, what my late father would have called an “agent provocateur,” attempted to humiliate Jill Biden, the incoming first lady, by recommending she drop the use of her title, which "sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.” “Dr.,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, should be reserved only for those with an M.D., adding, “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

....(snip)....

All this might seem like an arcane matter of manners, but considering the outcry against Epstein’s provocation, such questions touch on not only identity but the intersection of gender, race and civility. Just the other day Virginia Heffernan, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, posted her ire on Twitter, referring to Epstein as Joe:

“Joe, kiddo. I got my PhD when 2 ancient & 2 mod langs were required & 10y of bowing & scraping to men like you. So I use my title. Sure, It’s not for BAs like you mistaken for MDs, but for ppl like me & Dr. Biden who are mistaken for housewives.”

Similarly, Graeme Wood reminded us in The Atlantic this week that racial minorities “sometimes insist upon ‘Dr.’ for a similar reason,” that reason being that they prefer to use their title “if people have assumed you are a janitor or a common thief, just because of the color of your skin.” As an example, Wood wrote that Henry Louis Gates Jr., who teaches at Harvard University (among his many prestigious affiliations), once told a class: “Because this is a small seminar, you may call me by my first name, which is Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” ................(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2020/12/18/jill-biden-doctor-furor-titles-gender-race-civility-column/3948476001/

[jimfields33]

1. Updates on etiquette rules are needed for current times.

I always thought you were called the last position you held. However, maybe that needs to be updated in modern times.

[Irish_Dem]

3. An earned Ph.D. is permanent, no one can ever take it away. Is not dependent upon any particular job

Even when retired, you still have your doctorate.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. The attack on the title of Dr. Jill Biden is purely sexist.

While nobody's come after Dr. Henry Kissinger to lose HIS title, you have some exceptions that are susceptible to criticism.

If you watch the credits for The Cosby Show, you see Dr. William Cosby, Ed.D. Let's say that Bill Cosby didn't take the traditional route to an Ed.D. and still earned a doctorate.*

* According to Michael Eric Dyson, a sociology professor at Georgetown University and an acclaimed author of “Is Bill Cosby Right?” and numerous other books:

[Cosby] dropped out of high school after he flunked the tenth grade three times. He enlisted in the Navy, where he got his GED, and then enrolled at Temple University, where he dropped out to pursue a show business career. His unfinished bachelor’s degree from Temple was eventually bestowed on him because of “life experience.” Cosby enrolled as a part-time doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which awarded him the Ed.D. degree in 1977 for a dissertation on Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.
But not even that degree was unsullied by controversy: A professor who served on Cosby’s dissertation committee, Reginald Damerell, said that Cosby hardly took a class — and that he got course credit for appearing on Sesame Street and The Electric Company, “and wrote a dissertation that analyzed the impact of his show.”

Damerell’s claims came in his 1985 book called “Education’s Smoking Gun,” which was a strong critique of education schools. A University of Massachusetts associate professor who left after 12 years, Damerell wrote in his book about a program at UMass in which people already established in their fields could earn a doctorate by taking some course work, getting credit for their work experience and writing a thesis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/11/24/bill-cosbys-doctoral-thesis-was-about-using-fat-albert-as-a-teaching-tool/

[PoliticAverse]

7. Did you use "Dr" whenever you referred to Kissinger in the past? n/t

[no_hypocrisy]

8. Not in common parlance, but in formal reference, yes.

[unblock]

4. the whole thing is a great example of how the right-wing attacks and wins

they get some sexist nobody to write a stupid attack piece introducing an idiotic insult to a prominent democratic figure.

a major right-wing publication runs it, and suddenly everyone is debating an idiotic topic with a "lose / don't win" outcome. we can't win on this topic. either she shouldn't be using "dr.", in which case we lose; or she should, in which case we don't win, we merely get back to where we already were.

to the extent there's any blowback, it falls mainly on this sexist nobody, which doesn't help us (as opposed to blowback falling on a prominent republican, which might help us).


the real scandal here is that the the wall street journal deemed this stupid, blatantly sexist attack on a comparatively trivial matter to be worthy and appropriate for the limited and valuable space they have for opinions. that the right-wing is informed by such destructive and moronic crap is the real scandal.

*that* is a matter with a possible "win" outcome for us, and that is where our focus should be. the right-wing's sexism and the right-wing media's insistence on amplifying voices of sexism.

but instead the debate is on the no-win topic of appropriate use of titles.

[Blues Heron]

5. Joseph Epstein knows there's zero chance anyone will ever call him Dr.