2020 Out

We turned on CNN this evening to Mariah Carey self-promoting her memoir on Anderson/Andy’s New Year’s Eve special, which is about as #2020 as it gets. 

Call Me by Your Title?

My next blog post was going to be funny. And then I got busy and haven't written it yet and now I'm mad about something else entirely. So, funny is coming. In the interim, in case you happen to be female, an academic, have a terminal degree in your field in something other than medicine, or all of the above, this is for you. 

I was largely offline this weekend, which meant I was a bit behind on the news when I played catch-up at o-dark-hundred this morning when I wasn't sleeping, which I hear is what normal people do at that time. So, I am slightly behind on blowing my top at the weekend's helping of sexism, but just in time for the follow-up quotes.

The Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed on Friday written by a man who taught at Northwestern in the English department for God-knows-how-many years. In it, this man spends an inordinate amount of time chastising Dr. Jill Biden for (clutch my pearls in horror) using her earned title of doctor because she didn't study or practice medicine. This, coming from a guy who admits he only has a bachelor's degree he "earned in absentia from the University of Chicago because he was also serving in the Army in the 1950's." Meaning, he's never gotten a terminal degree himself.  He claims he never needed an advanced degree, which can only be described as the penultimate in privilege, afforded exclusively to white men of a certain era. Also, he's old. I think the intentional inclusion of the 1950's was supposed to infer that he has the wisdom of years, but it turns out that "old" in this sense just means "rotten."