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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

2012 "Even with the littlest of America's most talented females, I found that legs, arms, and heads still protruded."

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 2:28 PM

While I'll freely admit the internet has already pounded the joke into the ground—the internet pounds every joke into the ground; it's what the internet does—Romney's awkward phrasing about "binders full of women" was a classic Romney statement. It involved office equipment, which is one of Romney's life passions (if you doubt me, consider Romney's strangely hands-on involvement in the creation of Staples, which was less CEO-like and more cheerleaderish). It gave an air of preparation, which Romney loves to evoke. He's always talking about being ready on day one, and his office equipment fetish probably springs from this appearance of being prepared: What says you're prepared like a bunch of sharpened pencils, a neat binder full of facts, and unopened packages of pens? The statement was also representative of Romney's passions because it was a lie. And it indicated a greater problem with the way Romney thinks of people—as commodities in a portfolio, ready to be exploited.

The fact that Romney believes one of the major concerns of women is being home to cook dinner was more damning than the binders comment, but the binder comment was an evocative image that set itself up for a number of quick, easy jokes. That said, it's time to move on to the meat of what Romney said, rather than some awkward phrasing.

Or rather, it will be time to move on after you read these hilarious Amazon binder reviews that Buzzfeed collected.

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Good thing they weren't spindled.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 17, 2012 at 2:54 PM

"Even with the littlest of America's most talented females, I found that legs, arms, and heads still protruded."

This sounds like a sentence Google Translate would propose.

Posted by PCM on October 17, 2012 at 4:38 PM

When I saw his answer during the debate, I didn't even catch the fact that he garbled the "women in binders" line. I was more focused on the story, and what it said about him. I was struck by one thing: Mitt Romney is not a young man. Those in the press know this, of course. But the rest of us, and more importantly, the folks who haven't decided yet, don't. If you look at both men running for President, you would assume that they are roughly the same age. They aren't. Romney is much closer to Joe "get off my yard" Biden then he is to Barack "I was too young to serve in 'Nam, what is your excuse" Obama. But that is not the line that Romney serves. He looks the same now as he did when he was governor. He paints his hair to appear young, so he can say things like "we tried the old ideas". He has a trophy wife of a running mate not to balance the ticket (like McCain) but to appear young and fresh.

The binder story is made up. His image is made up. The man is full of it. I sure hope America figures that out before it is too late.

Posted by Ross on October 17, 2012 at 8:48 PM