“That’s Dr. Jill Biden to You, Sir. You Got a Problem With That?” according to Vogue. “On Saturday, a professor named Joseph Epstein, who apparently has gotten his knickers in a twist over the fact that Jill Biden uses the title Dr. before her name (and for good measure has @drbiden as her Twitter handle), was given a column in The Wall Street Journal to offer some unsolicited advice to the new first lady: Scrap that honorific.
“In a piece titled, “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.,” Epstein started out by dismissively addressing Biden as “Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo,” and then cut to the heart of his questionable argument: “Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”
“The 83-year-old Epstein, who identified himself as an emeritus lecturer of English at Northwestern University, briefly acknowledged that Biden had every right to use Dr. before her name by virtue of the doctorate in education she had obtained at the University of Delaware. But then he added she should not do so. “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child,” he wrote. “Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.” (Besides her doctorate, Biden also has a bachelor of arts in English from the University of Delaware and master’s degrees from both West Chester State College and Villanova University.)
“Almost within minutes, the column sparked outrage on social media—that demeaning term kiddo, used to address a 69-year-old woman, really set some people off—with critics not only calling Epstein sexist and out of touch but also dredging up some questionable and offensive positions he had taken in the past. ‘BTW this is the same Joseph Epstein who wrote a 11-page manifesto for @Harpers in 1970 explaining why he ‘would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth,‘’ tweeted the journalist Frank Rich. “No wonder he’s at @WSJopinion.”
[For comparison sake I notice that our local conservative blogger George Rebane, who also received a doctoral degree, uses “Dr.” in his bio as well. I guess Rebane and Jill Biden have something in common!]
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
My guess is that George Rebane would tell you that there is a substantive difference between his PhD and Dr. Biden’s PhD.
You see George believes that there are useful professions and professional degrees and un-useful ones, and being a PhD in engineering is a useful degree while a PhD in education is an un-useful one. All part of the Übermensch theory in action 🙂
Yes, you took the words right out of Dr. Rebane’s mouth! 😉
Well you both are correct, and true to form, Rebane has demonstrated his superiority complex again;
BillT 225pm – Actually Mr Tozer, there are very few in education with PhDs, which require an expansion of human knowledge instead of its regurgitation as supplied by Doctorates of Education.
Posted by: George Rebane | 14 December 2020 at 05:00 PM
There are some very unhappy people posting in the cesspool he calls a blog particularity Barry who has gone off the deep end. Sore loser when he lost to Diaz and maybe even worse with the Trump loss.
If Dr Jill Biden were a man I wonder if it would still be an issue
The answer is of course not. They did not seem to have a problem calling Sebastian Gorka “Dr.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Gorka
No surprise here. The double standard bubble some people live in should be burst often
Dr. Rebane continues to struggle with the elementary concept of what he and Dr. Jill Biden have in common. I hope this helps but you never know!
“What is a doctorate?
Even those not familiar with the doctorate degree definition may be familiar with the term Ph.D. The letters Ph.D. stand for Doctor of Philosophy, which is the most popular doctoral degree in the country. According to the National Science Foundation, science and engineering doctorate degrees — Ph.D. degrees — accounted for 74 percent of doctorates earned in 2012.
The following are other examples of doctoral degrees.
Doctor of Education
Doctor of Physical Therapy
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Dental Surgery
Juris Doctor
Some of these doctoral degrees, such as those for medicine and law, are also referred to as professional degrees.
https://www.schools.com/degrees/doctorate“