Will 'Binders Full Of Women' help us fill out our ballots?

First it was Big Bird. Now it’s “binders full of women.”

Seriously? This was the highlight of Tuesday night's presidential debate?

As with Mitt Romney’s reference to Sesame Street’s Big Bird character in the first debate, the big buzz that immediately went viral on Twitter and Facebook was Romney’s reference to the mounds of material he was presented as Massachusetts governor that helped him select females for his Cabinet.

A Twitter account that was created, #bindersfullofwomen, quickly attracted 12,000 followers. A similar Facebook account already has more than 250,000 “Likes.”

In a 90-minute debate filled with plenty of back-and-forth discussion on substantive issues and lots of basic disagreements between Romney and President Obama, the online chatter is dominated by juvenile comments about Mitt’s version of a little black book.

I know Twitter is notoriously snarky, but what does this obsession with the entertainment aspects of presidential debates say about the American electorate?

Frankly, this is Beavis and Butthead stuff: “Heh-heh, Heh-heh. He said binders full of women.”

Given that Romney was supposed to be addressing a question about pay inequities for women, some of the social media comments were clever and perhaps constructive. State Rep.Kate Segal, who represents the Battle Creek area, tweeted: “The problem of pay inequality: we don't need more 'binders full of women,' we need more ballots full of women.”

The response from a liberal super PAC, American Bridge, was to purchase the web domain BindersFullofWomen.com, promising to use the site to "educate voters on Romney's real record on issues important to women." Romney claimed that he requested the volumes of information on women after winning the 2002 election for Massachusetts governor and, as a result, had a stellar record of choosing women for leadership positions in his administration.

But The Phoenix, an independent newspaper in Boston, quickly set the record straight on Romney’s binders story:

“What actually happened,” wrote Phoenix blogger David Bernstein, “was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

“They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.”

Now, that’s post-debate information worth knowing.