In an attempt to proclaim his want to diversity his Massachussets cabinet with female employees when he was governor, presidential candidate Mitt Romney inadvertently set off a public firestorm of jokes and mockery with his "binders full of women" comment.
The comment went viral during last night's second presidential debate in Hempstead, N.Y.
It all started when moderator Candy Cowley asked President Barack Obama and Romney what do to address gender inequality in the workplace.
Here's exactly what he said, courtesy of LatinosPost.com:
"ROMNEY: Thank you. And [sic] 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?"
ROMNEY: 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."
The point Romney was making was clear-a bit awkward, but clear. That didn't stop everyone from immediately jumping on it and mocking it in almost every way possible.
The "Binders Full of Women" Tumblr account features pages full of memes. The Binders Full of Women Facebook page has 270,000 "likes" as of Wednesday morning. The @RomneyBinders Twitter account as more than 33,000 followers.
The Huffington Post claims the comment is also misleading. The article said Romney claimed he had more women in senior positions than in other state in the country.
"This statement, too, is misleading. While 42 percent of Romney's appointments during his first two and a half years as governor were women, the number of women in high-level appointed positions actually declined to 27.6 percent during his full tenure as governor, according to a 2007 MassGAP study," reported The Post.