You’re right – if you read the full story, it’s very clear: He asked his people to provide him with good options and they came back with a bunch of men.
Why didn’t they – presumably knowing what was important to him – come back with a list that included a significant number of women? Who were these people of his? Because I suspect that if that group included a number of women, so would the lists they came back with.
You seem to think it’s admirable that after he asked (and only after he asked) he was presented with a list of women. I think it’s telling (and somewhat deplorable) that he had to ask for women to be included as candidates.
How does that reflect on Romney though? If I ask people to provide a list of candidates for a job, and they bring me a list of mostly men, and I subsequently ask for women to consider, how is that my fault?
This kind of hair splitting is beyond absurd; Romney’s quote blew up because of the weird word “binders”, not the actual message behind it. The idea of Romney literally rummaging through binders, plus the awkward phrasing of “full of women”, is what made people think it was a ridiculous quote. That’s all.
He was being heckled at the Iowa State Fair. He had made a pledge not to raise taxes not too long before it, and people were criticizing him for that, saying that we needed more money to pay for Social Security and Medicare. He said something like, “There are various ways [of securing Social Security and Medicare]. One way is to raise taxes on people.” At which point, he was interrupted by somebody saying “Corporations”, and that’s when he said the “Corporations are people, my friend” and went on to answer that all the money corporations make goes to people.
The people who live in Berlin call themselves Berliner (no ‘s’ for the plural in German). Obviously, there is the potential for a somewhat adolescent pun, but that would apply just as much as if a German had said it. I don’t see it as a gaffe, and nor did his audience.
This is really, really nitpicky, and about three steps removed from what the “gaffe” actually was, which was the term “binders full of women” and had nothing to do with criteria for candidates. But, no, my first instinct in asking for candidates would not be (and I’ve hired multiple people in the past and can say that it was not) to specifically ask for female candidates.
Again, I have zero problem with how Romney comported himself for this supposed gaffe, and feel it reflected more poorly on those that made a big deal about it than it did on Romney.
I always thought that Obama’s “57 states” comment was a joke about having been to so many states he couldn’t count them. His joke was in the same vein as Steve Martin’s “Vegas” bit from the *Let’s Get Small *album:
I thought that that was actually meant to refer to 57 primaries, since the Democratic Party holds primaries in some non-state territories like Guam and Puerto Rico.
This exactly. It took off because it was a weird, awkward statement, and people made Stupid Statement Dance Mixes out of it. It hit just like any other Internet meme: Somewhat odd thing which is a bit funny gets remixed and repeated until it’s weird and stupid by definition, regardless of how defensible the original statement was or wasn’t, and thus is made into a stupid thing to have said.
Such a shame it got blown up somehow, I think Dean would have done far better than Kerry. He was actually engaging and seemed to have some newish ideas.
Agreed. It’s the equivalent of a foreign speaker giving a speech in Manhattan and saying something like “in this day, the most ambitious people are New Yorkers. If that be true, then I’m a New Yorker” and having people later laugh at him for calling himself a magazine.
“He should have said I’m from New York.” Yeah, it was a rhetorical flourish. You are really reaching here.
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I think that’s probably true of many gaffes. They are taken out of context, or spun, by opponents to make somebody look bad. Take Dean’s scream. As I understand it, he yelled in a loud room, but media outlets isolated his microphone to exaggerate the sound and make him sound “crazy”.
Now, Dukakis with the helmet. That’s a legit unforced error. Anybody who saw Dukakis in that helmet should have realized that it wasn’t a good look. Didn’t they do a dry run?
I think the analogous statement would have to be “… then I’m the New Yorker”. But yeah, a grammatical error, but not a big one. Kennedy’s “Berliner” comment might be good for a few jokes, but like I said, it wasn’t a gaffe.
I was going to mention that one, another is Jimmy Carter and the rabbit.
Now granted I only became aware of these incidents after the fact (not having been born for the second example and nought but little sprout for the first) so there may have been a context I’m missing but it does seem to be mountain out of mole-hill time.
I also think a lot of the critical commentary on George W. Bush and the children’s book he was reading at the time of being informed of the 9/11 attacks is also somewhat unfair, and I’m no particular fan of his.
