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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

'Binders full of women' fodder for jokes on Net

By: Lee-Anne Goodman

Posted: 10/18/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Mitt Romney (CP)

WASHINGTON -- Will "binders full of women" become legendary in American political folklore?

Democrats had their hopes up Wednesday following Mitt Romney's ham-fisted attempt to paint himself as an equal-opportunity employer during his much-anticipated second presidential debate against Barack Obama.

As he answered a question on equal pay for equal work during Tuesday's heated town hall-style faceoff, the Republican presidential nominee said he had personal experience on the subject from his years as Massachusetts governor, when all of his cabinet applicants "seemed to be men."

"We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet," Romney said.

"I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women."

Along with the fact-checking scrutiny that greeted that comment, the Republican's poor choice of words also set off a giddy eruption of social-media mockery, lighting up Twitter and spawning a website, a Facebook page and even a song.

Almost instantly, the hashtag bindersfullofwomen was trending worldwide on Twitter. Twitter parody accounts @RomneyBinders and @Romneys--binder also swiftly emerged, amassing tens of thousands of followers within a few hours.

Vanity Fair magazine tweeted: "Newt Gingrich, watching from home: 'Binders Full of Women' is a great name for my memoir."

"Binder?" reads one post on bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com, which featured a photo of a beaming Romney. "I just met her!"

A photo of a particularly lascivious-looking Bill Clinton also quickly made the rounds. The caption on the photo read: "Stop the debate. I want to know more about this binder."

American Bridge, meantime, a pro-Obama super PAC, announced it had bought the domain name BindersFullOfWomen.com to "educate voters on Romney's real record on issues important to women."

Paul Ryan, Romney's No. 2, tried to tamp down some of the ridicule on CBS News on Wednesday morning by lauding his running mate's commitment to women.

"All he simply meant was that he went out of his way to try to recruit qualified women to serve in his administration when he was governor," he said.

"That's really what he was saying. And by the way, he has an exceptional record of hiring women in very prominent positions in his administration and that's the point he was making."

Not true, apparently.

By the end of Romney's term in Massachusetts, according to the University of Massachusetts Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, the number of women in high-ranking positions was slightly lower than it was before he took office. The women he did hire were mostly in junior cabinet positions.

There were also no female partners at Bain Capital when Romney headed the company in the 1980s and 1990s.

Romney's latest claim has also been debunked by several news outlets in Boston.

The former governor didn't ask for the binders, the Boston Globe reported. Instead, they were presented to him by a coalition of women's groups, just as they would have been to whomever had won the gubernatorial election in 2002.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 18, 2012 A9

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