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EXPERT OPINION DECEMBER 28, 2020 ¦ 39

any doubt that Epstein is dissing considerable time lamenting the
the seriousness of Biden’s career, proliferation of honorary degrees
he made it explicit in the last line: given to wealthy donors and ce-
“Forget the small thrill of being lebrities like Stephen Colbert and
Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger Seth Meyers. (I agree with his gen-
thrill of living for the next four eral criticism of honorary degrees,
years in the best public housing in but I take exception with his snipe
the world as first lady Jill Biden.” at Colbert, who’s a living genius in
The message: Ditch your trivial my opinion.)
career and do your feminine du- But back to my point: I hon-
ties. Be the traditional first lady, estly don’t think any of this would
pour the tea, serve the cookies and decorate the have gained much traction except for the fact that
White House! women take these public slights of working wom-
Of course, it’s sexist and irritating. So why am en very personally. “It is already starting; they are
I not as outraged by this article as everyone else taking her down piece by piece,” said one of my
seems to be? Because it’s really a little trifle by a friends, a senior lawyer at a bank. “They’ll knock
curmudgeon octogenarian who’s mourning the her credentials, then her job. She’s working as a
decline of the centrality of European elitism. Back teacher; she’s not a woman for hire like Melania.
in the day, he writes, “getting a doctorate was then Can’t we leave it at that?”
an arduous proceeding: One had to pass examina- In other words, Jill Biden is one of us. So let her
tions in two foreign languages, one of them Greek be.
or Latin.”
For what it’s worth, I think Epstein is more [email protected]
of a classist than sexist. (Query: Would he have
bothered to pick on Biden if she had received her Twitter: @lawcareerist
degree from a more prestigious institution like ¦

Harvard?) Though Biden was ostensibly the object Vivia Chen is a senior columnist at The Ameri-
of his ire, most of his article was a rant about how can Lawyer and the creator of The Careerist
the doctorate has lost its elite patina. He spends blog.

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