Today, the chief operating officer of the US Chamber attempted to apologize for a horribly offensive post on their blog yesterday that labeled American women's fight for pay equity as nothing more than a "fetish for money." From COO David Chavern on the Chamber blog:

There is a lot that I don't like about [Pecks's] piece. It is simplistic and misguided. Even worse, I find it very, very old fashioned.

While I can appreciate the significance of Chavern's red-faced submission that it is beyond wrong to tell women who are unhappy about their unequal pay to focus instead on "choosing the right partner at home," it doesn't change the fact that we think the aforementioned Senior Director of Communications Brad Peck should probably start looking for a new job. ASAP.

In an update on the original Chamber blog post ("Equality, Suffrage, and a Fetish for Money") that was, as Firedoglake's Michael Whitney notes, roundly whacked by basically the entire internet, Peck writes that the Chamber believes in "equal employment opportunity." May we just reiterate that this is not the same as support for "equal pay."

The fact remains that the Chamber still opposes equal pay. . This would still be true even if Peck hadn't publicly dubbed the desires of equal pay advocates as just a "Scrooge-like fetish for money."

Neither Peck's lame non-apology apology or the group's chief operating officer's public berating of Peck's argument on what's really contributing to the pay gap change the Chamber's opposition to policies that would enable the advancement of women in the workplace. After all, the Chamber first expressed their viewpoint that pregnancy is a "voluntary" act--and therefore not deserved of discrimination protections in the workplace--in 1964. And most recently again this past Monday.

And who could forget when the Chamber's opposition to President Clinton's 1998 call for legislation to strengthen laws reducing disparities in men and women's earning power? Or the fight they waged against legislation in Congress in 2009 that would have made sure that companies couldn't keep women raped on the job from having their day in court.

A couple of half-hearted apologies certainly won't make us forget the many attacks on the rights of women the Chamber has launched over the years that they're NOT apologizing for. Their 40+ years of lobbying to exclude women from economic opportunity pretty much speaks for itself, as documented by the U.S. Chamber Watch here.

The Bottom Line: The Chamber's thinly veiled attempt to back-peddle here isn't fooling anyone--and it certainly doesn't right the many egregious wrongs the corporation has committed by actively opposing movements for gender equality. Tell the Chamber how you feel about this by tweeting a message to them at (@chamberpost), why dontcha...