Who is overwrought here?
Joe Biden wants to punch him out but Jill Biden says nope.
“That was such a surprise,” she told CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday, seated next to her husband, Joe Biden. “It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it.”
Why did he call her “kiddo”? It seems so over the top – like caricaturing his own caricature. The whole thing was facetious, but it’s that kind of facetious that is just a phony pretense of not really being insulting because aw come on aincha got no sense of humor? Jokey-insulting. So why kiddo? I haven’t been able to figure it out. Maybe it’s just because he couldn’t resist another level of belittling.
Writing for the Journal, Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, suggested her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware did not entitle her to use the honorific “Dr”, as she was not medically qualified. Her use of “Dr” therefore “feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic”, he wrote.
Unfortunately Martin Pengelly forgets to point out that Epstein has no graduate degrees, which makes it a little odd that he taught at Northwestern even as an adjunct.
Jill Biden of course does have the right to call herself “Dr” while Epstein does not.
The column met with widespread outrage and accusations of sexism, as well as delight in the apparent hypocrisy of many attendant rightwing attacks. The Journal’s editorial page editor defended the column, calling its critics “overwrought”.
Oh please. The column was at best rude and utterly gratuitous as well as sexist.
Colbert asked the president-elect if the column had made him want to stand up for his wife, “to like get out the pool chain and go full Corn Pop on these people”.
That was a reference to remarks for which he was criticised in the Democratic primary, when he reminisced about facing down a bully at a pool in the Delaware of his youth.
The president-elect seemed tempted, but Dr Biden said: “The answer is no.”
He said: “I’ve been suppressing my Irishness for a long time.”
Joseph Epstein needs to suppress his whatever the fuck that was.
“Why did he call her “kiddo”?”
This is not a defense, merely an attempt at an explanation:
1) Epstein was implementing a common comedic device in which someone starts off addressing someone formally, and then keeps switching to less formal means to the point that it becomes absurdly inappropriate. It’s like if I did an open letter to the Pope which began “Dear Your Holiness. Mr. Pope. Francis. Franky baby….” It’s like that scene in Die Hard where the asshole coked-up co-worker starts trying to schmooze with Hans Gruber, and eventually starts calling him “Hans…bubbie.”
2) Why “kiddo” specifically? Because that’s what Joe Biden sometimes calls her.
Of course, (1) isn’t that funny, and certainly not as Epstein employed it, and as to (2) … well, it should hardly require explanation that a total stranger should not address someone with the familiarity that a spouse does.
It also really undermines the other proffered defenses, that Epstein was just using Dr. Biden as an example to introduce a serious point about the supposed overuse of the “Dr.” title and that it wasn’t personal. When you begin your piece with cheesy comedic shtick, it undermines any claim that you’re presenting a serious argument, and when you use such inappropriate personal and familiar terms, it undermines any claim that this isn’t very much about the specific individual you addressed.
But anyway, I think that’s what was going through Epstein’s head. And I guess the editor’s as well.
Yes, that surprises me, too. Accreditation requires certain levels in degrees, and you are supposed to have at least one degree higher than what your students are trying to achieve. In our school, we require all academic faculty to have at least a master’s, even though our students are going for an associates; that is necessary if we want our courses to be transferable to a four-year college.
We have in the past had some adjuncts who did not meet this qualification; that isn’t the case anymore. Someone (whether our school or the accrediting board) cracked down on that, and we now require at least a master’s for any academic faculty. The requirements are different for skilled and technical; they meet their heavy burden in experience, which makes up for the fact that few people in fields such as welding and auto repair get master’s degrees. And in that case, it is more appropriate than a master’s.
I’m guessing that’s what happened with Epstein; in the past, when people were less apt to insist on advanced degrees for adjuncts, he was able to get hired. Now he probably wouldn’t be. At least, I hope other schools are being more rigorous in credentials, like my school.
I’ve personally known several adjunct professors, and none of them have held more than a master’s degree. They seem to be at the absolute bottom of the pecking order, lower even than full-time instructors, who are at least full-time employees with benefits. At my university, adjuncts contracted to teach individual classes for a miserably small lump sum (so they had no benefits). I recall one friend engaged in that work was getting paid $3000 per class per semester (six months), so she generally taught three courses a semester. I would guess that Epstein has a fairly fragile ego, working long hours for a pittance, which might explain his derision towards a much more accomplished woman with a rewarding job that she loves.
I’ve known several adjunct professors with doctorates. Many colleges are cutting costs by hiring primarily adjuncts. It’s part of the commodotization of education. My kids are both MDs now, but were considering biology research, and I recall discussing articles bemoaning the plight of the PhD in biology, how tenure track was decreasing and adjunct positions were multiplying, how a seemingly endless string of postdoc positions in hopes of getting one of the increasingly rare tenure-track faculty jobs wasn’t going to cut it as a career. There are good people, good scholars with PhDs, who work as adjuncts. There will be fewer of them over time, because nobody will want to enter those programs if adjunct work is all they have to look forward to.
I also recall being taught (back in the antedelorean epoch or whatever it was) by several adjunct professors with doctorates who had “day jobs” in industry. This is easier in fields like computer science than in some others.
I consulted Google>Wikipedia on adjuncts and professors while writing this and despite knowing that the adjunct situation has been expanding grotesquely I was still shocked to read that it’s 70-something percent of the profession.
It’s not at all clear that Epstein was ever even responsible for a class at Northwestern. NU says that he was a “guest lecturer”. Once. In the 1970s.
It may be that Epstein is correct and NU is not. If NU’s story is correct I think Epstein should be writing about resume inflation rather than matters of courtesy in academia….
That’s one thing I always liked about my school (both the ones I attended and the one I work at). They rarely used adjuncts. My work still uses very few, but has been expanding their use.
The irony is that the professional academic is disappearing even as college administrations inflate grotesquely. For every two instructors we lose, they hire one. For every administrator we lose, they hire two. And those two administrators will usually balloon into several underlings to help them do their half – or quarter – of a job. All of them making much more than the faculty.
Once???
Blimey, I thought it had at least been a regular gig, though not his main living.