Bill O' is a weird case. He has two graduate degrees (M.A. and M.P.A.). At that level, it's generally understood that, at least after an introduction, you can be on first-terms with academics. My practice is to always address academics whose qualifications I know by their title(s) if I have not spoken to them before. Usually at this point they either ask to be called by their first name, or they sign an email with their first name alone. Once they do this, I switch.SR wrote:yes, but these fuckwits are the mouthpieces for the rampant anti-intellectualism that exists today. The PhDs I know use their letters on on business documents, but differ wildly on their preference in classroom settings. On student work, the proff is almost always addressed by Dr. if that is their title. I have no doubt bill, in the above vid, purposely omitted the title. Dawkins would most likely not care to have his credentials noted by bill, but universities still bestow the letters. Until they stop, I'll always appreciate the acknolowledgement even in the face of humility or false humility within the ranksAdurentibus Spina wrote:To be perfectly honest, most professors -- at least, most I know -- would prefer to be addressed by their first name, at least by peers. If you look at the author's name on books published by academics versus books published by self-help scam-artists, it's always struck me that professors almost never add "Dr." or "Ph.D" to their name (they don't need to affirm their credentials), but pretty much every fad diet or fad self-help program is by some "Dr. Snakeoil McFuckface PhD."SR wrote:What bothers me as much as anything else this fuckwit says, is his insistence on addressing Dawkins as mister rather than dr. Bush league intellectual goonism. Fucking coward.
Worse, I've noticed a tendency, especially among smarmy religious apologists, to refer to academic opponents (especially in debates, but also in interviews) as "Professor --" or "Doctor --" in a way that's almost sarcastic. They seem to be implying something like: "The good professor doctor here make have a lot of book learnin', but up in his ivory tower, he's forgotten what real humans are like.
I've also heard Dawkins ask people to call him "Richard" quite a few times.
Jon Stewart (and Stephen Colbert) has called Bill out before for basically playing a dumb character.