Romney's non-gaffe binder story taken completely out of context by the media.

PierceHarlan · 2012-10-18T12:42:09+00:00

People who wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney under any circumstance and regardless of his record have manufactured yet another gender Circus Maximus by feigning offense about an innocuous comment the Governor made at this week's debate ("binders full of women") that actually demonstrated the Governor's sensitivity to women. The Governor made the shorthand comment to demonstrate a track record of seeking out and hiring women for important government jobs. Instead of applauding the Governor's record, people who are either paid prevaricators or extremist loons insist that the comment "flaunts his gender bias." http://news.yahoo.com/romney-and-the-%E2%80%9Cbinder%E2%80%9D-blunder-45646812684.html Their smug and righteous comments are not worthy of serious refutation.

It is, however, well to note that Vice President Joe Biden has jumped into the gender passion play by attacking the comment. You may recall that Mr. Biden once famously said this about Barack Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

SheriffBart42 · 2012-10-18T14:00:39+00:00

When you have nothing substantive to complain about, you must invent something if that is your modus operandi. I'm looking at you, feminists.

ceranna · 2012-10-18T16:22:19+00:00

Here's the full text that caused the internet frenzy:

QUESTION: In what new ways to you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn? ROMNEY: Thank you. And important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?”

And — and so we — 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 they brought us whole binders full 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.

Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. But number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.

She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.

We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I’m going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they’re going to be anxious to hire women. In the — in the last women have lost 580,000 jobs. That’s the net of what’s happened in the last four years. We’re still down 580,000 jobs. I mentioned 31/2 million women, more now in poverty than four years ago.

What we can do to help young women and women of all ages is to have a strong economy, so strong that employers that are looking to find good employees and bringing them into their workforce and adapting to a flexible work schedule that gives women opportunities that they would otherwise not be able to afford.

This is what I have done. It’s what I look forward to doing and I know what it takes to make an economy work, and I know what a working economy looks like. And an economy with 7.8 percent unemployment is not a real strong economy. An economy that has 23 million people looking for work is not a strong economy.

An economy with 50 percent of kids graduating from college that can’t finds a job, or a college level job, that’s not what we have to have.

OK so there's some key points derived from this speech that made a LOT of women raise their eyebrows, of which "Binders full of women" was just a sound bite that summarized the issue at hand.

“Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?” - This smacks of Affirmative Action, seeking out women solely because they are women. Furthermore, after 25 years as a businessman he didn't know ANY qualified women to work with him?

"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." Ok, obviously he meant resumes. And yes, he shouldn't be called a misogynist/sexist for this. But you have to admit it's pretty hilarious as was Obama's "gangbangers".

But number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. I think this was the big one in terms of offensiveness to women AND men. He essentially implied that women need to be given special treatment like flex time so that they can go home, take care of the kids and make dinner. Whoops. And no, I don't think he really meant that at all.

We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I’m going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they’re going to be anxious to hire women. - Here, a lot of people thought Romeny was inferring that once the economy picks up, there will be so many jobs that business would hire even women. So again, can be seen as highly offensive.

Note: I don't necessarily believe that he meant what was implied at all. But I can see where some people would get the idea. Sorry the post was so long :(

Smallpaul · 2012-10-18T10:22:58+00:00

It wasn't the media that ran with it first. It was the Internet. Then the media reported on the Internet, and it snowballed from there.

It does not help that it was a lie:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/romney-binders-full-of-women_n_1974092.html

I agree that the thing is ridiculously overblown, but it really started from places like Twitter and Reddit, not CNN and MSNBC.

But why are you "worked up" over Romney being unfairly treated. How is this case worse than "You didn't build that" or any of the other stuff both sides have taken out of context.

rightsbot · 2012-10-18T10:06:19+00:00

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Title	Romney's non-gaffe binder story taken completely out of context by the media.
Author	iamnotfromtexas90
Upvotes	2
Comments	6
Date	October 18, 2012 10:04 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/11ol00/romneys_nongaffe_binder_story_taken_completely/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/romneys-non-gaffe-binder-story-taken-completely.1011081 https://theredarchive.com/post/1011081