ambitious women

C is also for Couric and Clinton, and that, apparently, is good enough for 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.)