After the first presidential debate, liberals clung to Mitt Romney’s off-the-cuff comments on Big Bird. Immediately, the statement was mocked and meme-ified. Romney’s larger point about wasteful government spending was lost to those who saw nothing worth praising in President Obama’s performance, and thus wanted to bring Romney’s down by any means necessary, no matter how trivial.
Tuesday night’s debate was no different, and the meme of the night quickly became “Binders Full of Women.” A Tumblr page was instantly created and a Facebook group had over 300,000 members by 2 p.m. Wednesday. Liberals scoffed at Romney’s phraseology while, again, missing his overall message. Romney’s actual statement was this:
We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of — of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my cabinet and my senior staff that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.
These liberals ruthlessly mocking Romney have missed two crucial points: “Binders full of women” actually exist across the economic, political and journalistic worlds, and they are a good thing for feminism. Some liberals, to their credit, understood this. In New York Magazine Ann Friedman wrote,
Boston journalist David Bernstein reports that while Romney did indeed find himself with a binder full of women’s names, it wasn’t something he requested. The binder was put together by MassGAP, a bipartisan group of women who joined forces in 2002 to push Romney’s incoming administration to hire more women. Did you catch that? The binder of women was assembled by women and pushed onto Romney’s desk, unsolicited. When we mock Romney’s reliance on it, we’re actually mocking a concerted strategy by an accomplished group of women to diversify their state government. Oops.
The binder-full-of-names approach is a time-honored way of getting people (mostly men, sure, but also women) in positions of power to do more than pay lip service to the idea of diversity. In my own industry, I got so sick of hearing male editors say over and over that they didn’t know or couldn’t find any great women journalists, so I created an online compendium of recent work by women. A digital binder full of women journalists, if you will. I have no idea if editors have turned to it when they’re looking to assign articles, but I do know that its very existence disproves a classic excuse for lack of gender balance in magazine bylines. It answers a very stupid but persistent question: Where are the women writers? Right here, in this binder that I can show to you.
A New York Daily News opinions editor, Josh Greenman, is familiar with “binders full of women” that help diversify gender imbalances on op-ed pages. Hiring managers in businesses and law firms also use informational binders, called “recruitment binders,” full of resumes to help staff their offices with diverse hires. “Binders full of women” are nothing new in the professional world, and while there may be a better way to phrase what the binders are, it does not detract from their existence.
These binders are assembled to help recruit talented and qualified women for positions that they might not otherwise be considered for. Often women’s careers are sidetracked, halted or put on pause during their childbearing years, as attention shifts from work to family. Romney’s efforts to expand his cabinet to include more women also kept in mind the needs of working mothers in order to make it possible for his staff to have a balanced work and family life. Romney made every effort not only to recruit talented females, but also to keep them on his staff.
What could so-called feminists possibly find so funny about Romney valuing female contributions to political life? While many young, single Tumblr users may find Romney’s descriptions of the difficulties of recruiting and retaining working mothers comical, it’s likely that working mothers (and fathers) across America appreciated that Romney made every effort to be as flexible as possible in order to include female voices that would not have otherwise been present. Romney’s polling numbers were on a quick upward trajectory before the debate among women and in general. My guess is, after liberals have spent the better part of a week doing nothing but calling attention to Romney’s statements, he won’t be any worse for the wear with women.
Give the binders to Bill Clinton!
On a related note, although the liberals bash Romney's "binders of women," nobody wants to talk about the fact that the Obama Administration's record for prosecuting pornographers — where women in binders really are exploited — is dismal.
Nothing that terrible about it, but the phrase is weird enough to be really funny. Face it, the guy's a stiff, whatever his other merits and demerits.
Well , this supposed stiff is going to beat your candidate like a drum.
Yeah, better a selfish, lying, incompetent, inexperienced, unqualified fraud who looks good on TV, has cool friends and tries to be hip than a boring qualified guy with a successful track record.
There was only one stiff at the Alfred E. Smith dinner last night, and it *wasn't* Romney. You should Google the video. You wouldn't be as grumpy.
I guarantee that there is a binder full of liberal college women sitting on a Pelosi staffer's shelf from which they plucked the resume of one Sandra Fluke.
I am so glad views like this in the Jewish community are in the minority and will be for some time. I'm so sorry you're upset at your bleeding heart liberal Jewish brothers and sisters. I hope you don't lose sleep over it.
Progressive idiot.
I jhaven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. Can you make some sense, please?
Minority yes, but not quite the minority that it once was. Obama has lost something like 10 percent of the Jewish support since 2008.
Is this a joke? I mean, it's written by Bethany Shondark, so of COURSE it's a joke. To hail Romney's views on women as anything worst praising is truly laughable, regardless of the silly phrase "binders of women" or the actual legitimate efforts behind them (which were NOT Romney's, let's note, so the fact that he's taking credit for them as if he one day shouted "Let's hire more women! Someone assemble a binder of women!" is a ridiculous lie. n nMore importantly, let's not forget that Romney answered that question the way he did in an effort to totally avoid discussing equal pay & the Lily Ledbetter Act, which he opposes – oh, sorry, he'll "get back" to us – & that even in giving his distorted, delusional answer, he indicated that working women need more "flexibility" than working men so they can get home & cook dinner. In other words? Feminism my ass.
Spoken like a true alien living in the the spaceship's command module also known as his mom's basement. n nYou see, Undie, real women…not the ones flickering on your laptop…but the ones with normal, productive and..ehem, reproductive… lives, prefer to take time off or to shorten their work day when little-uns come along. In fact, they insist on that, with a drive you cannot yet imagine. Millions of years of mammalian evolution have driven the point home that in order for that little'un to survive, succeed and thrive, it needs its mommy for as long as possible. Well, perhaps not as long as you've been hanging around the hearth and home munching and mooching, but for the duration of what people who know about these things call the "formative years." n nO, and should you be fortunate enough to find yourself in the daunting predicament as a mate to such a woman, be prepared to work the extra hours, to cook that dinner and to give your wife a break by spending an hour or two making faces and silly sounds at the little'un. Yikes!
Incredibly bad article. So, yes, the "binders full of women" is a completely lame meme. nBut after taking pains to point out EXACTLY what Romney said – namely that HE initiated talking to women's groups and the HE was the one who drove the search to get more women in the cabinet, geez, it ends up that he "misspoke" again. Some people call that lying. nSo the fact that MassGAP was the driving force behind this apparently is irrelevant. Romney changed facts to fabricate a nice answer to the question. nWhat a useless apologist article.
Not true. Romney's lieutenant governor , Kelly Healy, does say that it was Romney that requested names of women to hire. Your asssertion is false.
Sorry, but I don't think so: n n"Healey also defended Romney from arguments from some Massachusetts Democrats that he only hired women in his cabinet because he had been forced to sign a pledge to do so by an outside group during the campaign. n n“The back-story here is that a bi-partisan woman’s organization, the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus came to both candidates in the race and said if you’re elected, will you pledge, will you promise to put as many women in your cabinet as there are percentage of women in Massachusetts which is about 50 percent," Healey said. "Both candidates said yes, and so when Gov. Romney was elected, he set out to fulfill that promise. One thing you can know about Gov. Romney is that when he makes a promise when he’s campaigning, he’s going to fulfill that promise." n nHealey talks out both sides of his mouth in a mere 5 sentences. It's pretty funny actually, he "defends" Romney regarding his hiring due to a pledge by saying that, um, Romney did take a pledge then "followed though on it.' But seriously it had nothing to do with that. Really. Not kidding here…. n n
first of all, kerry healy is not a "he", she is a "she". Secondly, the article you refer to actually supports the narrative that Romney did reach out to hire women. Whether it was at the urging of a bi-partisan group is irrelevant. Romney fullfilled his promise. That's a lot more than what Obama has done.
Just because a group of women hoisted a binder full of resumes in front of him, that doesn't mean that it was not his intention in the first place to hire more women.
Z z z z z z z z z z z. What a useless, incoherent post. Speaking of lying, your Messiah, The One, the Grand Whopper in Chief, he does that quite a bit you know, but he's hopeless at it. He's about to be skewered and laughed at yet again, which is good for a few giggles. Get your popcorn ready.
So they have "Big Bird" and now "the Binder of women". How silly the DEMS are._And yes its called resumes, they probably had a binder of resumes from women. Duh!_Man, you guys are stupid.
I wonder if the binder covers were printed with pictures of Big Bird and other Sesame Street residents.
Obama has his own binders of women – hundreds if not thousands of dead Mexican women due to Obama's gun running to Mexican drug cartels in Fast and Furious.
Apparently DEMS prefer "lady parts" to be submitted for review instead of resumes. War on Women exposed for what it is – phony rhetoric. I am ashamed that my gender and Democrats have reduced women to our "Lady Parts. Ya, that's progress….
R & R R on the r track.
The most significant portion of the above text, "while Romney did indeed find himself with a binder full of womens names, it wasnt something he requested". That's the point. He made a strong public statement that he did something- that he initiated something, that he absolutely did not. And the sub-text? He wouldn't have done it at all if it hadn't been 'handed' to him by motivated women's groups. Liar liar pants on fire. Not what I need in a president.