Stacey Ritzen
The conservative trolls are at it again, after last week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed which declared that Dr. Jill Biden should drop the title “Dr.” from her name. Extreme right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro has since jumped into the fray, and it’s going about as well as can be imagined.
The original piece, written by former American Scholar editor Joseph Epstein, quickly drew the ire of the internet by referring to the forthcoming first lady as “kiddo,” adding in his misogynistic argument that the title “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.” He argues that because Biden is not a medical doctor (she received a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Delaware at age 55) she has not earned being called a doctor.
All the while, over a quarter of a million Americans have lost their lives to a pandemic, and the sitting President of the United States is currently still attempting a failed coup against democracy. But sure, let’s waste our breath arguing the semantics of an educated woman’s title.
At any rate, Shapiro unsurprisingly took Epstein’s side in the debate.
“Only people with Ph.D.’s in hard sciences and medical doctors should be called ‘doctor,'” tweeted the editor of the Daily Wire. “This has been my consistent position for over a decade, as the execrable [Daily Wire host Dr. Michael Knowles] can attest.
He continued, offering a questionable anecdote from law school to reinforce his position. He also came up with an extremely hypothetical scenario in which someone having a stroke at dinner would be disappointed to learn that a doctor at the table was not a medical doctor.
He concluded his tirade by reminding everyone that his wife—she of the apparent non-wet-a**-pussy—is a medical doctor. And gosh darn it, that’s just not fair!
It didn’t take long before Shapiro likewise began getting owned by his critics, who roasted his dumb take.
A few people also pointed out that his publication regularly refers to Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who has a political science doctoral degree from Corvinus University, by his title.
Others, however, pointed out the inherent flaws to his logic.
Hypocrisy, idiocy, and flawed logic, all at once? We would expect nothing else from Ben Shapiro.