Clinton & Couric, both blond...

Posted by Lorraine Berry at 10:11 AM on March 8, 2007.

"C is for Cookie: That's Good Enough for Me"

C is also for Couric and Clinton, and that, apparently, is good enough for Slate's Rebecca Dana. It's not often that one reads in Slate something that looks like an elementary school assignment, but today's the day. Dana's "write a compare and contrast article about two famous women for International Women's Day assignment" has netted us, "The KatieShow: Does Couric's rocky start at CBS spell trouble for Hillary Clinton?"

The bases for the comparison...

But they've both staked claims in the same middle ground, taking pains to appear strong but not mannish, ballsy yet maternal. Both are bottle blondes (perhaps in an effort to mute their tough streaks). Both have gone on "listening tours" around the country, have undergone ambitious style makeovers, have opened their private lives to public scrutiny. And Couric and Clinton also share the occasional counsel of Matthew Hiltzik, a major New York City publicist who specializes in managing the public images of powerful and difficult women. (Despite these efforts, Couric and Clinton still ruffle feathers: Both are subjects of unauthorized biographies by Ed Klein, neither our era's greatest feminist nor our greatest historian, but a man with good taste in material.)

There you have it: two bottle blondes with ambition. Damn. If Madonna's name had started with a "C," no doubt she would be included in the comparison.

Let's look at a few of Dana's assertions.

Television news anchor and president of the United States aren't such different jobs, after all, and not just because until now they've been the exclusive province of old white men. These are the people who tell us what's happening in the world, what it means, and what we're going to do about it. They must be calm, personable, and handsome under lights. Diplomacy, intelligence, and genuine leadership abilities a plus.

Old white men? John F. Kennedy was 43 when he was elected to the presidency. William J. Clinton was 46. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he succeeded the assassinated McKinley. Those presidents were certainly white, but old? Pshaw. Brian Williams, the NBC Anchor, is 47. His predecessor, Tom Brokaw, was 43 when he took over as solo anchor at NBC Nightly News. Charles Gibson, who Dana characterizes as the "old white man" of the group is 63--a little over three years older than Hillary Clinton. And Couric? She just turned 50. So, Dana's characterization that news anchoring and presidenting are the exclusive province of old, white man is simply … wrong.

In other words, Dana constructs a straw man against which to measure Couric and Clinton, to argue that neither possess the traditional view of who is supposed to fill those positions. But Dana's gold standard is iron pyrite.

I'm not sure what Dana considers to be a "woman as a figure of national and international prominence." Certainly, in the past decade, we've seen such figures as Madeline Albright, Condoleeza Rice, and Janet Reno in such positions. Or does she simply mean "president or news anchor?"

Next, we're told that "insiders" at CBS and the other networks have hinted that "a small but unmovable percentage of the American television audience that cannot now and will not ever feel comfortable hearing serious, scary things about the world from a woman." I'm not sure what to do with that sentence, since I find myself wondering if Dana's being snarky or just oblivious to the fact that there's also a small but unmovable percentage of the American television audience that isn't going to listen to serious, scary things period. And there's a small but unmovable percentage of the American television audience who believe that George W. Bush is doing a good job. And, no doubt, there's a small but unmovable percentage of the American television audience who believe that Bigfoot is real and that we never landed on the moon. So, what does that say about anything?

And finally. Because, seriously, you cannot talk about public women without talking about the only thing that really matters: how they dress. Couric, we're told, is a "sartorial flip-flopper;" Clinton has stayed the course with her boring wardrobe. Is this a subtle dig at the presidential candidate's flip-flop position on abortion rights or the Iraq war? Should Couric be modeling her clothes on Clinton, thus making the purpose of this essay seem more substantive than it first appears?

No. Because the real substance of the article seems to be this: Couric has had her share of success. Her husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer, which has made Couric into a national figure in the War on Cancer.

Just think. If Hillary can convince Bill to go back to his Big Mac habits, maybe, just maybe, she can use his heart attack as the basis for "a Couric-esque side effect by upping the passion quotient a little."

Hillary gets rid of Bill and she and Katie can double-date.

Now that would be the best basis for compare-contrast, don't you think?

Tagged as: feminism, clinton, couric

Lorraine Berry blogs at Culture Kitchen.