Solway gives the vapid, self-seeking, and gobsmackingly pretentious “Dr” Jill her due.

Joe and Jill Went Up the Hill
The adulation Jill Biden has received for so flimsy a dubious accomplishment as a paper doctorate in a derelict field like Education Studies is utterly misplaced, whether it is the mentally impregnable Whoopi Goldberg thinking that Jill Biden was a medical doctor and should be considered for Surgeon General or a sports announcer for an NFL game, as Megyn Kelly notes, ingratiatingly remarking that “Dr. Jill Biden” was in attendance. I watched that game between the Eagles and the 49ers and nearly turned off the set when the fawning announcer asserted his bona fides.

The title of Dr. linked to Jill Biden certainly seems inappropriate. Recently, my wife Janice Fiamengo posted a Substack article critical of the First Lady’s doctoral thesis from the University of Delaware, Student Retention in the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs, a document running to a risible 80 pages, not counting reference pages and appendices. Additionally, the Literature Review does not identify disagreements and contrary viewpoints in the education literature, as is standard practice, nor does her Methodology section indicate the limits of her analytical procedure, also standard practice. These, as well as thin citation, inadequate research, and generally poor writing, as Wall Street Journal film critic Kyle Smith has shown, are crucial problems.

Formerly an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan and later at the University of Ottawa, Janice chaired and administered dozens of doctoral candidacies, professional and academic, over the years and has also served as an external examiner. She knows her business. In her Substack entry, which I would urge the reader to check out, Janice made it vividly clear that Mrs. Biden’s doctoral thesis does not pass muster. Indeed, in my estimation, it would not qualify even for a Master’s Degree.

Equally to the point, most everyone knows or should know that a degree in Education is not worth much. I have lectured as visiting professor in various Education Departments and Teachers’ Training Colleges in Canada and the U.S. and written three books, Education Lost, Lying about the Wolf and The Turtle Hypodermic of Sickenpods, in which the subject was put under the loupe. I came to the conclusion that such Departments and Colleges should be completely abolished. Like Gender Studies, they are a waste of time and resources. The Ed.D might have generated respect had it conformed to the conditions and implications of the title — “Dr.” should mean something. In this instance, it doesn’t.

One might wonder, what’s the big deal in having a Doctorate or why it needs to be flaunted. It is not a rare phenomenon. After all, several U.S. secretaries of defense were so accoutered, though they were never saluted as “Doctor.” As a colleague reminds me, renowned business tycoon Jack Welch was never addressed as “Doctor,” though he had a Doctorate in chemical engineering. Former HUD secretary and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson is referred to as “Mr.” in the New York Times. In Canada, former NDP leader and Ph.D. Ed Broadbent was never called “Doctor.” Even Howard Dean, the onetime DNC chairman, has never to my knowledge been called “Doctor,” though he is an M.D. What, then, is Dr. Biden’s agenda? Why is the press shocked, shocked?

More worrisome, as Samantha Chang at The Western Journal points out, “The first lady, who has never held elected office, is her husband’s ‘closest and most protective confidante’ and is influencing every major decision he makes, according to Bloomberg’s Nancy Cook. This is frightening because no one voted for Jill Biden, an English teacher who has no background in politics or public policy.” Ms. Chang alludes in this context to the secret presidency of Edith Wilson, one of the strangely implausible episodes in American history of a First Lady managing her infirm husband’s duties.

Ultimately, this is the Biden trademark: a corrupt and geriatric incompetent in the White House, and a vain First Lady devoid of intellectual substance who passes herself off as a scholar. Everything about such people is meretricious, or in popular parlance, “fake.” Such is current American leadership in both politics and education, a tale of broken crowns and failed policies hurtling down the historical gradient.

Ah well, in Pedo Joe’s case “breaking his crown” couldn’t do all that much damage anyhow, considering how very little he ever had underneath to begin with. New category for items such as this, concerning the various deceptions, ploys, and subterfuges deployed by FederalGovCo to cover up who’s actually running things: Deep State maskirovka.

3

Error happened.