Jeb Bush isn't going to get an honorary degree. I doubt he'll lose any sleep over it.

Al Gore is going to get an honorary degree. I won't be losing any sleep over that.

Al Gore will still be a goof ball in my eyes (and in the eyes of many others), the only difference being that he got an honorary degree from a bunch of academic goofballs--the same kind of people who thought Ward Churchill was eminently qualified to head his department.

Its no accident that the ritual of getting a degree--honorary or otherwise, involves strange vestments and funny hats. Local legend recalls the words given by the irreverent, fabulously intelligent Hugh Nibley during an invocation at a 1960 graduation at Brigham Young University:

"We have met here today clothed in the black robes of a false priesthood . . ."

Years later he sought to amplify that comment:

Why a priesthood? Because these robes originally denoted those who had taken clerical orders; and a college was a "mystery," with all the rites, secrets, oaths, degrees, tests, feasts, and solemnities that go with initiation into higher knowledge.

But why false? Because it is borrowed finery, coming down to us through a long line of unauthorized imitators. It was not until 1893 that "an intercollegiate commission was formed . . . to draft a uniform code for caps, gowns, and hoods" in the United States.1 Before that there were no rules. You could design your own; and that liberty goes as far back as these fixings can be traced. The late Roman emperors, as we learn from the infallible DuCange, marked each step in the decline of their power and glory by the addition of some new ornament to the resplendent vestments that proclaimed their sacred office and dominion. Branching off from them, the kings of the tribes who inherited the lands and the claims of the empire vied with each other in imitating the Roman masters, determined to surpass even them in the theatrical variety and richness of caps and gowns.

When I read this again, I occurred to me that this described precisely the dynamic we are witnessing with Al Gore--his credibility shattered, his allies seek to add "another ornament" to bolster his authority.

The real irony is this comedy is that the process of conferring an honorary degree has always been about transferring some of the luster of an accomplished and esteemed individual, to the institution itself--"Here is excellence, this is what we honor and strive for..." By implication, the acolytes are impressed with the idea that such accomplishments are possible through the auspices of the institution--after all, won't the students share in common with those so honored, the same vestments and sashes?

Somewhere along the line, the provosts started believing their own propaganda, and now, rather than incur prestige from those that they "honor", they diminish themselves by dismissing the accomplished and brilliant and gilding the fool and liar.