Joe Biden Once Said That Jill Got Her EdD Because She Didn't Like Her Name Behind His on the Mail
Jill Biden has been roundly mocked for pompously demanding that she be called “Dr.” simply because she has a doctorate in education, or Ed.D., which is generally easier to obtain than a doctorate of medicine (MD) or doctorate of philosophy (Ph.D.).
Amid the uproar, some have pointed to a newly surfaced report in which former Vice President Joe Biden said the reason why his wife got the degree was because she was tired of constantly being referred to as “Mrs. Biden” and wanted a title to elevate her status.
According to a 2009 Los Angeles Times story, Biden told reporters during the 2008 campaign that his wife was annoyed by what she perceived as her “second-class status.”
Joe recounted: “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.”
The brouhaha over Jill Biden’s insistence on being addressed as “Dr.” ratcheted up this week, leading to a hilarious takedown by National Review’s Kyle Smith.
In his biting piece, Smith dissed the former second lady as a self-important poseur who demands that she be called “Dr.” because she’s insecure.
“You can tell someone is smarting from an inferiority complex when he insists on being addressed as ‘Dr.’ on the basis of holding an academic doctorate rather than being a physician,” Smith quipped.
“None of the professors I knew at Yale, even the ones who were eminent in their fields, insisted on the title, and I think most of them would have scoffed if someone had addressed them as ‘Dr.'”
Smith then blasted Jill Biden by pointing out that she doesn’t even have a Ph.D., but rather the less prestigious Ed.D.
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Smith implied that even highly educated people with a Ph.D. smirk at pompous imposters who demand to be addressed as “Dr.” when they’re not physicians.
“Insisting on being called ‘Doctor’ when you don’t heal people is, among most holders of doctorates, seen as a gauche, silly, cringey ego trip,” Smith remarked. “Consider ‘Dr.’ Jill Biden, who doesn’t even hold a Ph.D. but rather a lesser Ed.D., something of a joke in the academic world.”
Smith then derided Jill Biden’s dissertation as embarrassing in its amateurish writing and analysis.
“It is a gasping, wheezing, frail little Disney forest creature that begs you to notice the effort it makes to be the thing it is imitating while failing so pathetically that any witnesses to its ineptitude must feel compelled, out of manners alone, to drag it to the nearest podium and give it a participation trophy,” he wrote. “Which is more or less what an Ed.D. is. It’s a degree that only deeply unimpressive people feel confers the honorific of ‘Doctor.'”
Smith echoed the sentiments of essayist Joseph Epstein, who argued in a Dec. 11 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed that Mrs. Biden’s rabid insistence on being addressed as doctor “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”
Epstein further noted: “Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title ‘Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.'”
He said that “a wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”
Epstein wrote that while having a Ph.D. was once considered prestigious, “that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally” outside of the sciences.
Yet Jill Biden doesn’t even have a Ph.D., so perhaps she should get off her high horse.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
