Way back at the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, was tiffing with Cornel West, then a Harvard professor. (He has since gone to Princeton, though, given his name, he could be more at home at Cornell.) Reading the New York Times, I noticed something curious: The paper always referred to Summers as “Mr. Summers” and to West as “Dr. West.” What gave? Summers was certainly a Ph.D. The imbalance was . . . as I said, curious.

So I did some nosing about. And I found that you could request your honorific in the Times: If you wanted to be called “Dr.,” they’d call you “Dr.” If you wanted to be called “Mr.,” you were called “Mr.” I did a piece on this general subject: “Is There a Dr. in the House? What’s in an honorific.” (It is the first piece in my 2007 collection, Here, There & Everywhere.) Also, we had a piece in National Review by Roger Kimball. We called it “Dr. West and Mr. Summers: A Harvard tale.”

Why am I bringing up this ancient history? Well, I was reading an article today, here. And a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt (kind of a cool name), was talking about Summers. And he said, “Given that Dr. Summers is widely recognized as one of the country’s most distinguished economists and formerly served as treasury secretary . . .”

Oh, stuff the “Dr.” stuff, would you? David Frum told me a delightful story, which I believe I used in my 2002 “Dr.” piece. (Haven’t read it in a while.) A young man — probably from the South — arrives at Harvard for his freshman year. And, in his first week, he addresses a professor as “Dr. Smith” (or something). And the prof says, “Where does it hurt, sonny?”