Melissa McCarthy to receive honorary doctorate at SIU Carbondale.

The Emmy Award-winning actress will attend the May 2019 commencement at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and receive an honorary doctorate of performing arts degree.  She was a fashion design major at SIU in 1988 and her husband Ben Falcone is from Carbondale.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Melissa McCarthy.  I think she is hysterical and from what I’ve seen a really great human being but is that enough to get a doctorate degree?

Honorary degrees are starting to come into question.  I don’t know about you but I have a couple friends who have earned their doctorate degrees and I can tell you they worked so hard.  The thesis alone almost did a couple of them in.  So should someone who has made some good movies or written a few good songs be awarded the same honor.  I mean I get it … it’s not the same honor obviously but Maya Angelou did like to call herself Dr. Maya Angelou and she didn’t even have an associates degree.  She did have many honorary degrees given from 30 different universities.  (She was without a doubt a phenomenal women but not a Dr.)  Also let’s not forget “Dr.” George W. Bush, who was given a Doctorate in Law  by Yale University. To be fair he did at least have a Masters in Business Administration before getting his phony Doctorate.  You don’t even need to have a high school diploma to receive an honorary degree, or even be human.  Just ask Dr. Kermit the Frog, who was given a Doctorate of Amphibious Letters by Long Island University in 1996 and even gave the commencement speech.

So what do you think … should honorary doctorates degrees be a thing or are they just another way of unnecessarily glorifying celebrity?