Actress Stacey Dash and talk show host Meredith Vieira squared off on the subject of the so-called "wage gap" between men and women. A lot of liberals are sharing the video as if it was a big win for the "Equal Pay" movement. The problem here is that Dash and Vieira are both wrong. Dead wrong. Dash expresses a noble sentiment about having to work harder to overcome obstacles but she seems to be conceding that a real wage gap between men and women exists. Vieira on the other hand is just "pissed off."

Neither Dash nor Vieira seem to grasp that the often cited "fact" that women only make 77 cents for ever dollar men make is a completely inaccurate and misleading statistic. The gap is there because motherhood leads many women to make different career choices which affect their earning potential. It's not a side by side comparison of men and women working similar jobs with similar seniority and experience. Meredith Vieira complains that she didn't always make as much money as her male counterparts, but a 2006 New York Times profile sheds some light on why that may have been the case.

Doctors advised that if she conceived again — which she intended to do — she refrain from flying for the first three months. A few months later, when she learned that she was actually pregnant, her producers only scheduled interviews that she could reach by car or by train. She had planned to tell Hewitt about the baby when she completed her first trimester, but it didn’t work out that way. Hewitt found out, most awkwardly, when he called one night to tell her to jump on the Concorde for a great story in Paris.

Her original four-year agreement allowed her to work part time for the first two years, then full time for the second two. Now she asked for one more season of part-time. Hewitt, however, was under pressure from his high-profile team to make Vieira work as hard as everyone else.

“I had a bunch of guys coming to me and complaining,” Hewitt told me. “My back was to the wall because the other guys were saying, ‘We’re exhausted from doing her extra work.”’ When CBS said her choice was full time or nothing, she chose nothing.

In economic terms, a less available employee is a less valuable employee. The whole "equal pay" myth is explained in greater detail in the video below. You're welcome.