I hate to interrupt this fascinating discussion about whether you are discussing the deficit or the national debt, but I was wondering whether there is anything else newsworthy. I looked through my newsfeed and the only thing that got my eyebrows up was that some advertiser, which I cannot remember, and therefore could probably use the advertising (wouldn't it be a hoot if it were Prevagen), had pulled its advertising from the Tucker Carlson hour because old Tucker boy opined that Jill Biden was illiterate, or maybe it was practically illiterate, which is probably not unlike other media pundits calling Melania vapid, except that Jill Biden has a Ed.D. and Melania has, well, modeling experience, and for some reason, perhaps surgical, always squints like she is peering into the Bat Signal from close range.
Speaking of Jill Biden's Ed.D., last week, or maybe it was earlier this week, someone opined somewhere, perhaps the WSJ, that Dr. Jill should drop the Dr. from her name because she had an Ed.D., not an M.D., and was undeserving of the title. Well, that got everyone's hackles up who are even slightly left of center, along with all the people right of center who happened to have an Ed.D., and some even called it misogynic, which seemed a stretch, since guys get Ed.D.s too, and this particular pundit probably would have called out the president if he had an Ed.D. and wanted to be called Dr. President. It did not escape the pundit's notice that Dr. Jill, or, if you prefer, Jill, teaches English at a community college, which is not exactly at the height of academe. It is unclear whether she teaches English, as in the language, or that she teaches English literature. After all, they do teach remedial English at community colleges. For some students it is required. Anyway, he also noted that she had received her Ed.D. from the University of Delaware, which happens to have a business school, or maybe it is a public policy school, named after her husband, and that her dissertation committee knew that secret and acted accordingly. Personally, I agree with the pundit on the issue, though not how he, shall we say, articulated it. So anyway, a lot of people were talking about it and generally feeling superior whether they had graduated from high school or not. It got me thinking maybe we should have an honorific for someone with a GED. It always hurts to be left out of the title game. And I think that's fair because it is probably harder to earn a GED than obtain a high school diploma, since you have to show some initiative and actually do stuff rather than just kind of show up.
So a day or so ago, another pundit, who happens to have a B.A. Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, decided to double-down in a follow-up opinion piece, also, I think, appearing in the WSJ. Now, as we have learned from Aunt Becky, a lot of undeserving students get into top colleges if their parents generously support higher education, or they pay someone to take their SATs, so just this guy graduating for Yale doesn't mean he is a genius, but he is probably pretty bright because they don't give out Phi Beta Kappa keys to students at the bottom of the class, not that his subsequent career trajectory has him in the running for a MacArthur fellowship or anything. So let's just call him Smarty Pants, and everyone can decide for themselves what credentials he holds for that appellation. Anyway, Smarty Pants, in the crudest possible description, rips Dr. Jill a new asshole, comparing her Ed.D. dissertation to a third grade social studies report without the magazine clippings. And he didn't do it quickly and painlessly; he really took his time and explored the subject in depth, probing every possible aspect of her intellectual deficiencies with surgical precision. My response was just wow. Wow. If he turned his talents to giving old Melania the once over, you probably couldn't have printed it anywhere you would admit to having read it. But I guess that is why politics is called a blood sport, and this guy is a gladiator. Shock and awe boys, shock and awe.
With these two opinion pieces floating around, old Tucker weighs in and attempts to one up Smarty Pants, but he didn't have the gravitas, or frankly the grammar and vocabulary, to even come close. I mean it was so obvious that he is not Phi Beta Kappa material it was embarrassing. I'd go so far as to say that he sounded pretty goofy. But a lot of guys like him aren't embarrassed when embarrassing themselves, which of course is why they have opinion shows on Fox News. But, still, they do not embarrass themselves badly enough, at least consistently enough, to qualify for Newsmax, so they have room for improvement. And then there's always OAN to aspire too. I think you have to do an summer internship at Infowars to even be in the running.
Just to round this out, I think the debt and the deficit are too high, but maybe I'm just jealous that the government has a higher credit limit on its credit cards than I do, and the collection agencies aren't calling it up at all hours of the day and night threatening to take its first born.
