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Joe Biden has been sworn in as the 46th US president at the US Capitol in Washington. He declared ‘democracy has prevailed’, during a ceremony at the US Capitol, where two weeks ago a swarm of supporters loyal to his predecessor stormed the building in a violent but futile last stand to overturn the results of the election
Joe Biden sworn in as 46th president of the United States More
Dr Jill Biden has said her doctorate, the subject of a controversial opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, is one the achievements of which she is most proud. “That was such a surprise,” she told CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday, seated next to her husband, Joe Biden. “It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it.”Writing for the Journal, Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, suggested her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware did not entitle her to use the honorific “Dr”, as she was not medically qualified. Her use of “Dr” therefore “feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic”, he wrote.The column met with widespread outrage and accusations of sexism, as well as delight in the apparent hypocrisy of many attendant rightwing attacks. The Journal’s editorial page editor defended the column, calling its critics “overwrought”.Dr Biden’s thesis was on maximising student retention in community colleges. She also has two Masters degrees. She has said she will continue to work in education while she is first lady.“I taught all eight years while I was second lady, right,” she told Colbert, referring to the eight years in which her husband was vice-president to Barack Obama.“I’m really looking forward to being first lady and doing the things that I did as second lady. Carrying on with military families and education and free community college, cancer [research] that, you know, Joe and I have both worked on. And then I’m going to teach as well.”She also said her husband had attended when she defended her doctoral thesis – “I got to hand her her doctorate on the stage, University of Delaware,” he said – and expressed thanks to those who defended her against Epstein’s attack.“Look at all the people who came out in support of me,” she said. “I mean, I am so grateful and I was, you know, I was just overwhelmed by how gracious people were.”Colbert asked the president-elect if the column had made him want to stand up for his wife, “to like get out the pool chain and go full Corn Pop on these people”.That was a reference to remarks for which he was criticised in the Democratic primary, when he reminisced about facing down a bully at a pool in the Delaware of his youth.The president-elect seemed tempted, but Dr Biden said: “The answer is no.”He said: “I’ve been suppressing my Irishness for a long time.”He was also asked if he will be willing to work with Republicans who have attacked him and particularly his son, Hunter Biden.“If it benefits the country, yes, I really mean it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry. This doesn’t mean if I were back in the days in high school, I wouldn’t say, ‘Come here, you know, and go a round.”Perhaps sensing a relapse – Biden began his presidential run saying he wanted to fight Donald Trump – Dr Biden interjected again.“But you have to take the high road,” she said. More
Last week the writer Joseph Epstein embarrassed himself by publishing a Wall Street Journal column denigrating incoming First Lady Jill Biden for using the “Dr” title she earned with her doctorate. He wrote: “Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”The backlash was swift. The president-elect’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, tweeted: “What patronizing, sexist, elitist drivel”. The daughter of Martin Luther King Jr tweeted in support of Jill Biden, reminding people that her father used the title Dr, despite not being a medical doctor. She added “And his work benefited humanity greatly, yours does, too.” And the first lady to be replied herself in a tweet on Sunday, saying: “Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished.”Epstein’s article exposed the cultural powder-keg Dr Biden was always destined to ignite. She maintained her professional career teaching community college while serving as second lady and intends to continue working as first lady. While some of us are thrilled with that, others, like Epstein are threatened.First ladies have often been expected to sacrifice their careers to perform ceremonial tasks. I can’t imagine what it was like for Michelle Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer like her spouse, to be expected to oversee a White House garden and Christmas decorations while her husband ran the free world.Of course, Michelle Obama had much less flexibility in defining the first lady role than her predecessors. Because of the unfair stereotypes that caricature African American women, the bar for her to succeed was set incredibly high. Unfortunately, that meant mimicking the least threatening first ladies who preceded her. At the time plenty of Americans would have been unlikely to describe a nearly 6ft-tall, Ivy league-educated, brown-skinned black woman as non-threatening. So instead Michelle transformed into a pearls-and-sweater set hugger-in chief. No one is threatened by a hugger-in-chief.For Melania, the transformation was far less pronounced. With her modeling days behind her, prior to her husband’s election she had settled comfortably into the role of trophy wife turned socialite. Essentially her full-time job was being the charming spouse of her powerful husband, which is ultimately what the role of first lady has been. While audio tapes recorded by her former friend and aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff denote a darker, less charming side of Trump, she fundamentally did what most first ladies do. She hosted state dinners, did some volunteering, and remodeled various parts of the White House grounds. Again, she leaves a fairly non-threatening legacy, like the First Ladies who most recently preceded her.But Dr Biden announced from the get-go that she would continue her career as a community college professor, regardless of whether her husband was elected president. She had already broken the mold by maintaining her career while he was vice-president. Though this is not particularly unusual in some of our allied countries (Cherie Blair, for example, maintained a career in academia while her husband Tony was British prime minister), it is highly unusual for America.Dr Biden will soon become the least traditional first lady in recent history. The last time an American first lady charted a nontraditional path it didn’t go so well. Remember when Hillary Clinton was leading the charge on healthcare reform back in 1993? She probably wishes that you didn’t. Years later Clinton is looked back on as a pioneer – yet the blowback she received at the time was brutal. Some of it was driven by the legitimate gripe that when you elect a president you are not electing his spouse to do policy. Fair enough. But some of the opposition and vitriol was clearly driven by something more disturbing and enduring: the idea that many Americans want a traditional and non-threatening first lady – a first wife, first mother, first hostess, first cookie-baker, first-hugger, but not a first career woman and certainly not an ambitious woman.The fact that Dr Jill Biden is a woman whose professional ambitions are important enough to her to continue them despite being married to the country’s most powerful man is what really troubles Epstein. He makes that clear in his column’s conclusion, in which he writes, “Forget the small thrill of being Dr Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.” He is oblivious to the fact that marrying a powerful man may not be what Dr Biden, or any modern woman, would consider her greatest thrill today.Thanks to the example set by vice-president-elect Kamala Harris, and her husband Doug, perhaps soon more men will become comfortable seeking out the thrill of marrying a powerful woman. More
The Wall Street Journal has come under a torrent of denunciation for publishing a “sexist” opinion article that calls Jill Biden, the first lady-in-waiting, “kiddo”, and questions her right to use “Dr” in front of her name.Biden’s director of communications Elizabeth Alexander denounced the piece as “sexist and shameful”. Michael LaRosa, Biden’s spokesperson in the transition team, went further and demanded an apology, saying the newspaper should be embarrassed by the “sexist attack”.The article, written by a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, purports to offer Biden “a bit of advice”. Opening on the provocative note of calling her “Madame (sic) First Lady – Mrs Biden – Jill – kiddo”, the author goes on to recommend that she drop the honorific of “Dr” before her name.“‘Dr Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic,” Epstein writes. He justifies his condescension towards her title on grounds that it referred to an “Ed D – a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware”.Over the weekend, a groundswell of criticism built into a tidal wave over the haughtiness of the piece and its sexism and racism, such as where the author suggests as a simile for rarity the phrase: “Rarer than a contemporary university honorary-degree list not containing an African-American woman”.Hillary Clinton put her reaction most pithily: “Her name is Dr Jill Biden. Get used to it.”Other prominent public figures also waded in. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, tweeted at Biden saying: “My father was a non-medical doctor. And his work benefited humanity greatly. Yours does, too.”Doug Emhoff, who is destined to become “second gentleman” as the spouse of the vice president-elect Kamala Harris, said that Biden had earned her degrees through “hard work and pure grit… This story would never have been written about a man.”Perhaps the harshest criticism came from Epstein’s old employer, Northwestern University, which tartly noted that he hasn’t taught there in almost 20 years. In a statement, the English department said it rejected his opinion on Biden “as well as the diminishment of anyone’s duly-earned degrees in any field, from any university”.Epstein’s profile on the Northwestern website, where he had been listed as an “emeritus lecturer”, was apparently later taken down, the journalist David Gura reported on Twitter. More
