Here's a nifty little parable about the goofball, yet linchpin, anxieties that animate Movement Conservatism.
Apparently during the SOTU Jonah Goldberg got a bit snotty on the Twitter machine regarding Jill Biden being referred to as "Dr," when she is not a medical doctor and has professionally worked at the (gasp) community college level. Oh here, let Jonah explain what he was "thinking."
Last night on Twitter I commented that I think that the rote insistence
that Jill Biden be referred to “Doctor Jill Biden” is kind of silly
(that’s how President Obama referred to her). This elicited a remarkable
amount of anger. I then made things worse by explaining that Jill Biden
isn’t a “real” doctor. She holds a doctorate in education. That invited
even more bile.
Gosh. I wonder why.
Do, go on.
I find it all so odd. For starters, I never claimed she wasn’t entitled
to the honorific. If anything, it’s out of respect that I think people
should drop the habit. Washington is teeming with people with Ph.D.s
(never mind law degrees!). Among my friends alone, I can count at least a
dozen people who are technically entitled to be called “Doctor.” But if
I caught, say, Shannen Coffin insisting that people call him “Doctor
Coffin” (a great name for an evil scientist by the way), I would mock
him mercilessly.
In my experience inside the Beltway, insisting on being called “Doctor”
when not being addressed by students is a sign of vanity or some other
insecurity (I’m of course talking about non-medical doctors). And people
who insist on calling other people “Doctor” do so for similar reasons —
out of an over-compensating need to show respect.
Hang on to that phrase "in my experience inside the Beltway" a bit. But let's fast-forward to this emanation from Mona Charen. It is delicious.
Mark, Jonah,
your discussion of the honorific “doctor” reminds me of my education on
the subject. When I got to college, I noticed that even the full
professors — 100 percent of whom had doctorates — styled themselves “Mr.
Swensen” or “Ms. Elliott” on their office doors and on their handouts. I
asked a teaching assistant about it. “The only people who insist upon
the title ‘Dr’ in higher education,” he said, “teach at community
colleges.”
And then the teaching assistant stepped on the ball.
Right.
There are two reasons why community college professors are more likely to want the Dr.
First, the personal: as in the case of Jill Biden, the "honorific" means a hell of a lot to the members of families who come up from the working classes.
My own mom was NYC working class Irish; she hard-scrabbled herself two advanced degrees, an MA in Spanish from Middlebury and, much later, an MSW from Fordham. (The first she partly financed by working at the White Castle which is still there at Bell and Northern in Bayside.)
She was pretty goddamn proud of those degrees. As well she should have been. A working class woman in the mid to late 20th century doing that...? Moving on up!
When I got my own PhD fom the University of Miami -- English literature, Irish Studies focus -- she was proud to bursting.
It was at the time a bit awkward, since I can be a bit of a clod about certain things, and also I am not, er, a person who takes formalities of any sort seriously. But my mom spent almost a grand of her own money on my regalia -- and she was there when I got hooded, and it was one of the chief goddamn moments of her life.
If you get a PhD and can afford to be blase about it, you are extremely privileged, and it would behoove you to not be an asshole about anything regarding the usage of the title, which is as it happens not an "honorific".
Which leads us to...
Why do community college professors care about being called "Dr."?
Because it means a lot to our students!
It does, and there's yer answer.
But now for the punchline. Here.
Mr. Goldberg is currently a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
Please, Jonah, speak some more about pompous bullshit academic-y sounding honorifics.
