Will Romney’s story about having woman in binders have legs? It sure sounds that way. Two reasons why:
1. The phrase is now all the rage on Twitter and could be picked up by late night comedians.
2. It increasingly sounds as if it is at best, inaccurate. At worst, a flat out lie. GO HERE.
Did Mitt Romney really request that as governor of Massachusetts, he brought “whole binders full of women?”
It was his response to a question – on gender pay inequality – which turned heads and started fingers tapping on keyboards. Before the debate was over, there was a Twitter hashtag, a series of memes on Tumblr, and a Facebook page with over 100,000 fans. The phrase was the third-fastest rising search on Google during the debate.
It prompted memes, such as Hugh Hefner in what appears to be a library: “Binders full of women? Oh sure, I’ve got hundreds of them.”
Referencing an investment by Romney’s former company, Robert Drakes asked on Facebook, “Do they sell #BindersFullOfWomen at Staples?”
Others, such as Joi Jamison’s post to Facebook, get at the heart of the matter: “Binders full of women cost 77 cents, while binders full of men cost $1.”
The Obama campaign was in on it as well: a paid post from President Barack Obama’s official campaign account appeared atop searches for “binders full of women” on Twitter.
It has sparked this photo being widely circulated on the Internet (CNN has it on their article and it’s now all over Facebook), showing Playboy’s founder Hugh Hefner. Some GOPers are not amused:
Prediction: The way our politics works, expect that ANY MOMENT a Republican will respond by using the same caption on a photo of Bill Clinton (you heard it here first…)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.