In his first show after the second presidential debate, Rush Limbaugh took advantage of Mitt Romney's answer to a question about gender pay inequality to recall his own “binders full of women,” a time when he required photographs of all female callers.
On his radio program, Limbaugh discussed a moment from last night's debate when Romney explained how he attempted to find qualified women for cabinet positions as governor of Massachusetts. Romney claimed he reached out to a number of women's groups to help find people and they proceeded to bring him “whole binders full of women.” After asking what was “so offensive about the phrase 'a binder filled with women,' ” Limbaugh used the story to remind his audience of a period of time on the show when he required pictures of female callers before they could speak on his show. Limbaugh called his practice of cataloging and rating women based on their appearance “nirvana”:
If you were going to be on this program -- you were allowed to call and be on the air -- we had to have a photo of you on file. Only of women. We didn't make this rule applicable to men. Women had to have a photo of themselves on file with us before they could go on the air.
If they called and couldn't establish that a photo we had was of them, they didn't get on. So we did it. And we were deluged with photos. We had women in the nude on the rocks at Mendocino Beach. We had women in the kitchen. The pictures ran the gamut. Snerdley was in heaven. It was nirvana.
Limbaugh's sexism didn't end there. After a caller told him that the “Democrats are losing the war on women” and referenced a Fox News post-debate focus group with GOP strategist Frank Luntz, Limbaugh described two female members of the panel as “babes” and Obama “robots” seeking to destroy Romney's reputation with “mind-numbing war on women dribble.” Limbaugh went on to call the women “the perfect cookie cutter liberal women” and “your classic feminazi-liberal woman.”