You’re nobody nowadays until you’ve been canceled. It’s the new new thing. To be stripped in one fell swoop of every degree, title, honor, award, or citation you’ve ever earned, in retaliation for having written or said something that, only a few years ago, would have been regarded as innocuous or self-evident or, at most, provocative, is where it’s at in 2020.
The other day it was Joseph Epstein’s turn. The Chicago-born Epstein, 84, is a former editor of the American Scholar (where, let me acknowledge, he frequently published my own work a million years ago) and a writer of countless essays on diverse topics that make you laugh while also making you think.
On December 11, the Wall Street Journal ran one of those essays, headlined “Is There a Doctor in the White House?” Addressing Jill Biden, the soon-to-be First Lady, Epstein suggested that perhaps she should lay off calling herself “Doctor Jill Biden,” given that she is not an M.D. but rather earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware.
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