Cavuto: "[A] ho is a ho, right?"

On the April 12 edition of Fox News' Your World, while discussing the controversy surrounding radio host Don Imus' recent remarks, host Neil Cavuto asked rapper M-1, one half of the group Dead Prez, "[A] ho is a ho, right?" Cavuto added: "So, if Imus uses the expression and then you use the expression, you've both said 'ho.' " He later said, "So, there's nothing wrong with Imus saying it, right?" On the April 4 edition of Imus in the Morning, which was then produced by CBS Radio and simulcast on MSNBC, Imus referred to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

Cavuto also called Imus' remark "an errant comment" and "a badly phrased comment." However, as Media Matters for America has noted, Imus' comment was part of a pattern of racial smears on Imus in the Morning.

From the April 12 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:

CAVUTO: M-1, I know that this is not your parent company, but NBC Universal owns Interscope Records, which has, under its employ, a lot of rap artists who routinely say stuff like you've just said and worse. And, NBC is OK with that, not OK with Don Imus making an errant comment. Do you find that, just as an artist, hypocritical?

M-1: No, I don't find it hypocritical mainly because of our relationship to the system -- our relationship with our oppressor. Once again, with personal responsibility taken at hand here, we're talking about rappers who are coerced to say things other than what the reality of our community is and Mr. Imus, who obviously has said sentiments that come from his personal beliefs. I think you are comparing apples and oranges here even when you bring the rap community into the question. And once --

CAVUTO: No, you know, M-1, I don't think I am. I mean, a ho is a ho, right? So, if Imus uses the expression and then you use the expression, you've both said "ho."

M-1: Well, no, I don't --

CAVUTO: Well, you've both said it. So, now, you're saying --

M-1: No, I don't use "ho."

CAVUTO: All right, so --

M-1: I don't say "ho." And that's my point exactly. And even the word "ho" existed way before 1976, when rap began. "Ho" is a relationship between the pimp and the pimper, the pimpee, if it may. And so --

CAVUTO: So, there's nothing wrong with Imus saying it, right?

M-1: Well, of course --

CAVUTO: And there's nothing wrong then with rappers -- unlike yourself -- saying it, right?

M-1: Well, of course there's something wrong with both of those relationships. However, what governs that relationship is the historical relationship of oppression between black people and our white oppressors in this country, and that's not a racist statement, that's the reality that we live in.

CAVUTO: But Don Imus wasn't oppressing you or anyone else. He made a mistaken -- maybe a badly phrased comment. He's lost a job on the air as a result of it. You can continue to make pretty, you know, outlandish comments for art, whatever you want to call it. It just doesn't seem right. Does it seem right to you?

—R.C.