The latest skirmish in the culture wars involves incoming first lady Dr. Jill Biden, as she likes to be known.
Biden is not a medical doctor but a doctor of education, and that seems to have stuck in the craw of Joseph Epstein (honorary doctorate), who in a somewhat snarky piece for The Wall Street Journal, told Biden in effect to stow it. Epstein’s commentary was not so much about BIden but about the decline of educational standards in this country in general, something I would heartily agree with, including in the awarding of doctorates, something I would not agree with. My family was enormously proud to see my oldest nephew Matthew receive his doctorate in applied mathematics after years of hard work and challenges that began when he was in high school. The degree has brought him a plum job as a government subcontractor at a prestigious university. So a PhD in any subject is nothing to sneeze at, and we can’t assumed it wasn’t well-earned..
Nevertheless, Epstein’s diminution of Biden’s was just another predictable example of mansplaining. (And what woman hasn’t experienced that?. Just the other day, I had the highway department in my municipality tell me to turn on the weather when I asked a question about the threat of snow. (Yes, I know about weather reports. I used to be a weather reporter. I was merely gathering information from different sources. That’s what reporters do, I felt like telling him but didn’t. Guess I’m just too much of a woman for that.)
But Biden’s use of her doctoral title isn’t about female achievement, men’s fear of and need to dominate it or even the very real decline of educational standards in this country. It’s about something no one seems to want to consider, perhaps because there is so little of it in America — clarity. When Jill Biden calls herself “Dr. Biden,” people assume she has a medical degree. I’ve seen this on the internet, with one poster gently correcting another. Indeed, because of the confusion, the Associated Press — whose stylebook many publications follow, including the newspapers I’ve written for and the magazine I edit — only uses “Dr.” with regard to a medical doctor, a dentist or a veterinarian and only on first reference.
For good reason, I think. When the flight attendant on the PA system asks any doctors on board to meet in the middle of the airplane cabin — something that I witnessed on a Lufthansa flight from New York to Munich on my way to Thessalonkiki last year — he or she isn’t looking for an educator. The flight attendant is looking for medical help for a passenger in distress. (Thank God in Lufthansa incident, the passenger was merely dehydrated, a potentially dangerous situation, however, whose symptoms can mimic a heart attack, a flight attendant told me later when I inquired after the passenger’s health.)
Language, as I’ve written on this blog in a post denouncing “they” as the new singular, reflects culture. But it also shapes it. And it cannot shape it effectively if there is confusion resulting from a political correctness that pays mere lip service to equality.
Jill Biden is to be commended for being a passionate, committed teacher who continued to teach even n as she carried out her duties as the wife of the vice president. According to her husband, President-elect Joseph R. BIden, Jr., she didn’t like getting mail addressed to “Sen. and Mrs. Biden” when he was in the Senate. That spurred her to get her doctorate.
The only thing that would spur me to get a doctorate is the love of a subject. An honorific doesn’t make you a person of accomplishment. Rather your words and deeds, your passion, do. Unfortunately, in our Instagrammy culture, unless you’re constantly touting your achievements and credentials, they aren’t real. You’re not real. And that’s just nonsense.
I would also say if Jill Biden got tired of seeing Mrs. Biden on the envelope, she could’ve been Ms. Biden or used her maiden name, although that would just be another man’s last name, her father’s. She could use her first name (Cher, Madonna) or invent a name.
Or she could’ve done what I did. I decided a long time ago in our patriarchal society that I had no desire to be a supporting player in some man’s life — “the moon shining back his light a little,” in the words of Harry Chapin’s brilliant song “Shooting Star” — when I could be the star in my own. And so I never married, have never been pregnant and have never mothered children. And thus I’ve never been anything but myself.
The other day, I got a Christmas card addressed only to my first name. Indeed.