How Media Used to Refer to Jill Biden Being Called 'Dr.' (With Bonus Shot at Husband Joe)

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The Biden team and liberal freaked out this week because an academic, Joseph Epstein, dared to write in the Wall Street Journal that Jill Biden, who received an Ed.D., should not insist that people call her that outside of the academic environment as in fact she had been doing.

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His opinion, in an op-ed. But they didn’t like it and came after the WSJ and Epstein, drawing fire for trying to cancel that opinion.

Democrats and some media then went after the Wall Street Journal and Epstein, claiming it was “misogynistic” to write and run such an article.

It’s astonishing how much water-carrying that media is willing to do now for the Bidens, even over something like this.

So it’s rather interesting to see what media actually thought, when they didn’t think that they had to carry water for them as much and could be more honest… when media actually gave some more honest assessments about Joe and Jill Biden.

Here was an opinion piece on Jill Biden wanting to be called a doctor, written in 2009 by a female op-ed writer for the LA Times, Robin Abcarian, “Hi, I’m Jill. Jill Biden. But please, call me Dr. Biden.”

Let’s note one pertinent part:

In 2007, at 55, Jill Biden did earn a doctorate — in education, from the University of Delaware. Since then, in campaign news releases and now in White House announcements, she is “Dr. Jill Biden.” This strikes some people as perfectly appropriate and others as slightly pompous, a quality often ascribed to her voluble husband.

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Yes, back before Joe Biden became their only hope to get back power for the Democrats, media mostly knew that Joe was an empty suit who liked to brag about himself. Here’s what Politico called him in April 2009, after he almost sparked a panic over H1N1. “These sorts of comments are what the Obama administration fears from Biden, who after more than three decades in Washington is known for making gaffes.” They even recognized that the Obama administration recognized it.

The LA Times noted how Lynne Cheney, Jill Biden’s immediate predecessor, actually had a Ph.D in British literature and wrote a real dissertation titled, “Matthew Arnold’s Possible Perfection: A Study of the Kantian Strain in Arnold’s Poetry.” But she went by “Mrs. Cheney.”

Amy Sullivan, a religion writer for Time magazine, said she smiled when she heard the vice president’s wife announced as Dr. Jill Biden during the national prayer service the day after President Obama’s inauguration.

“Ordinarily when someone goes by doctor and they are a PhD, not an MD, I find it a little bit obnoxious,” Sullivan said. “But it makes me smile because it’s a reminder that she’s her own person. She wasn’t there as an appendage; she was there as a professional in her own right.”

Newspapers, including The Times, generally do not use the honorific “Dr.” unless the person in question has a medical degree.

“My feeling is if you can’t heal the sick, we don’t call you doctor,” said Bill Walsh, copy desk chief for the Washington Post’s A section and the author of two language books.

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Media had absolutely no problem with the LA Times article back in 2009 and the basic truths it espoused. No one accused the writer of being “misogynistic.”

Notice how Abcarian notes that newspapers generally do not use “Dr.” unless it’s a medical degree.

So what’s the real lesson being taught here? It’s that people can’t be critical of “Dr.” Jill Biden or her husband now. And if they are, they will be shut down, as we saw here and as we saw on social media with the Hunter scandal story. And reality will be rewritten to fit the narrative.

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