I ended up missing the presidential debate tonight because I was covering delightfully trashy reality TV (recaps forthcoming!), but I would check in on Facebook periodically to see which talking points were affecting my voting peers. Turns out that, just like with Big Bird the other week, it’s a simple phrase that has electrified the nation: “Binders full of women.” And yes, it was unintentionally coined by Mitt Romney yet again.
When asked about gender pay inequality, Romney explained that when looking to fill cabinet posts he could find only male candidates:
“And I said, ‘Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified? 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.”
And a meme was born. In the past hour some brilliant soul secured the Tumblr domain name Binders Full of Women, and people have already sent in dozens of smart images skewering the phrase—mostly through pop culture! New ones are being added every few minutes, but here are our favorites so far:
Internet, I love you. Somehow I don’t think that when the Founding Fathers first envisioned democracy that they quite had this in mind. But it’s still the best to see a meme go viral so quickly and people unite in making image macros to riff on every possible angle of the joke before the candidate has even gone home.
Think we can expect some sort of response from Barack Obama and/or the White House Twitter?
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