MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT



You could say that about everything has been said that there is to say concerning Mitt Romney's "binders full of women" comment during the second debate.

We've heard that the so-called lists of potential women for his cabinet were prepared by a women's "break the glass ceiling" group before the election and that Romney merely reviewed the candidates; he did not originate the request to compile them.

We've heard claims that Romney didn't really increase the percentage of women in his cabinet. Democratic Party partisan Maria Cardona states in a CNN article:

Romney told that story in an effort to demonstrate how well his administration had done in hiring women. Except it didn't. A study by the University of Massachusetts and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy shows that the percentage of women in senior positions during his tenure actually declined. It went from 30% when Romney took office to 27% when he left and up to more than 33% after the new governor took over.

We've heard that Bain Capital hardly knew a woman partner and that's one of the reasons Romney needed lists of qualified women, because he didn't encounter or associate with many women executives.

It's all probably true.

The wording "binders full of women" became an instant twitter hit while the second presidential debate was still in progress. After all, it's so rich in sardonic connotation and resonance coming out of the mouth of Mitt Romney.

Romney's view of women is primarily as a marital appendage. Just offer Ann Romney as exhibit "A."

Given the Republican war on women that even extended to a GOP senate candidate in Missouri staying viable after claiming the existence of "legitimate rape," the image of women in binders presents unintended very dark humor indeed.

That's, after all, how the Republicans and Romney sort of look at women: bound up in binders.

It's time to liberate them from a Staples three-clip back-to-school special. Women will help energize a new economy, and do it with equal pay and equal opportunity.

But Mitt would look just great as a pricey Jaguar salesman inside one of those binders, wouldn't he?

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