Originally a comment by Papito on Kiddo.
As one whose book-learning is also piled higher and deeper, I only doctor when doctored at. I recall a work colleague introducing a visiting scientist as Dr. Fulano, and I said pleased to meet you Dr. Fulano, I’m Dr. Zutano. My colleague did a double-take before he recalled that my amazing skillz were acquired in the school of hard books.
I taught at a few universities, and I much preferred teaching at a state university over the more highly ranked university up the road. I found the students more engaged, more serious, more respectful, and more likely to actually use what I was teaching. Apparently the feeling was mutual, as the dean offered me a tenure-track position when it opened up, but I had already pivoted to a more exciting and remunerative career.
My mother also disliked being called Dr., because she wasn’t a medical doctor. But, like iknklast, it was the only way she could get any respect from some people. Did you know there are parts of this country, or people from them, who will insist on calling a fully-grown woman Miss Firstname? If being called Dr. Lastname bothered her, that was nothing compared to being called Miss Firstname. So Dr. Lastname it was. I made her a plaque in shop class that said Dr. Lastname, and it traveled to every desk thereafter.
It’s too bad there’s not a parallel to “Miss” for men, because nobody deserves to be Mirr Josephed more than this withered peduncle. Perhaps he needs to be called “Joey” more often. Like this:
Monsieur Columnist – Mr. Epstein – Joey – kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small matter to you, but which is important to others. Any chance you might stop belittling women? Making fun of women who actually did the work to get a doctorate, unlike yourself, sounds and feels very petty, not to say a touch jealous. Dr. Biden did original work, which she will build upon in her position as First Lady, on a matter of not just local but national importance. If this nation could in fact meet students needs, and thereby increase retention, at the community college level, this nation would benefit greatly – more than it has from anything you’ve done. We are fortunate to have a new First Lady whose project will be of national value, rather than something so vapid as the wife of the world’s foremost bully claiming to be against bullying, or another kept woman reciting stultifying anti-drug mantras. Think about it, Joey, and forthwith drop the act.
You taught at a national university for decades, without a doctorate. Congratulations: you got an academic job at a time when they went begging. Every new PhD graduate in the country already had a job, and they had to work down the list until they got to you. This is not a measure of how great you are, but of how easy your life has been, in comparison to those of later generations. Has it been as fun to judge soldiers of younger generations who actually had to fight, from your experience as a barracks polisher, as it has been to scoff at those who earn PhDs but can’t get the academic jobs that unqualified elders such as yourself sat on for decades?
Many are aware that getting a doctorate has been and, for many, still is, an arduous proceeding. I assure you that if you had to sit through my oral examination you would require that glass of water. Mine was in three foreign languages simultaneously, and I was expected to answer questions in the language in which they were asked. Like many newly-minted doctorates, I had to interview with people whose would never hire me because their abilities and publications looked small in comparison. People like you, Joey. I notice that you received your job without any publications, without any linguistic abilities, without any original research. Your first publication was fifteen years after you got a BA. Do you know that nobody from a younger generation would be hired with your credentials? And now you criticize others for not passing a trial you never even considered. Isn’t that a sort of academic stolen valor?
You go on, in your intolerant boasting, to ridicule honorary doctorates because, horror of horror, they are not only given to white people. Isn’t anything left just to us, you wail. Well, the truth is, Joey, that not only are many women more qualified, and more serious than you are, but many black people have contributed more generously than you have to American society and culture. You bemoan the coarsening and cheapening of academic credentials, without having any of your own, and it seems more and more like you are just crying about people you consider inherently lesser than yourself passing you by. We are living through a period with no great American writers, you say? Perhaps you should read more broadly, and consider that people who aren’t old white men like yourself may be producing the great literature of our era, it’s just that you won’t read it. Our literature lacks “gravity,” you say, but perhaps you mistake inertia for gravity. Does Yaa Gyasi lack gravity? Junot Díaz? Marilynne Robinson? They all have gravity to spare, even if it’s the gravity of realities you want to ignore. As does Dr. Biden. Isn’t your real problem that they’re not talking about you? Joey? Kid?
