Image courtesy of Creative Commons

So, Mitt Romney has a binder full of women. I wonder if that’s anything like the locker full of women many pubescent teens have. At any rate, this got me thinking about the good old days when I had binders for school. Or, better yet, when I had a Trapper Keeper. I can almost smell the freshly sharpened No. 2 pencils and the sounds of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album on my tape-deck. Indeed, I had a Michael Jackson folder — he was stylin’ in white pants, button down, and a yellow sweater vest — in my Lisa Frank unicorn Trapper Keeper. That was a sweet, sweet Trapper Keeper.

Now I’m fixated on this idea of school binders with those neat little subject dividers that help everything stay organized. Because if there is one thing I suspect Mitt Romney is very good at, it’s being efficient. After all, you don’t get rich by dismantling companies and shipping their jobs overseas with precision by accident.

Perhaps we should look inside Mitt’s binder:

• Social Studies: Blame the Chinese! Blame the Chinese! (sung to the tune of “Blame Canada”)
• Math: This is a remedial course, taught by former President Bill Clinton. He’s good at arithmetic.
• Science: Bwahahahah! There’s no science section in Romney’s binder, silly!
• Reading: Hmm, looks to be a remedial course in reading comprehension.
• Biology: Repeat after me: Your body belongs to Jesus you slutty, slutty whorebag.
• Phys Ed: He’ll just pay his buddy Paul Ryan to take that class.

But I digress… Let’s get back to that sweet binder full of women. Is Wonder Woman in there? ‘Cause, seriously, that sounds pretty awesome.

In fact, it’s so awesome that the internet has exploded with a Binder Full of Women meme. Mere hours after the debate a Facebook page dedicated to Romney’s Binder Full of Women has more than 200,000 followers. And the Tumblr Binders Full of Women is ridiculously funny.

Now, when Romney said that bit about binders full of women — part of an answer to a question about job discrimination and equal pay for women — my first thought was that he was talking about paper dolls. And that makes some kind of demented sense to me because I think Mittbot actually thinks that women are just two-dimensional playthings that you can cut into any shape you want. And they best be home in time to make dinner — even if they work! (And what exactly was Mitt’s point about the role of two-parent, married families when it comes to gun violence? Because intimate partners never murder each other.)

Seriously, this comment about binders is nothing short of the female voter’s equivalent of a 47 percent remark. As governor, Mitt Romney knew so few capable, intelligent, talented women that he had to delegate to someone else to go out and find women to hire? This is about as tone-deaf as it gets on the issue of workplace discrimination, the glass ceiling, equal pay, and other issues typically labeled women’s issues (although, as President Obama thankfully reminded us — these are family and economic issues that effect us all).

Why weren’t there any female applicants to his cabinet? Perhaps because they didn’t want to work for a guy who is the kind of color-blind that makes all women invisible. Indeed, his answer boils down to a sentiment not that dissimilar to the closet-racist’s quip, “I have a black friend.” Romney likes women, after all. He hired one once.