From Atrios, today:
This morning on CNN Howard Kurtz pulled the "what about the rappers! that's where the word ho comes from!" stunt. What this has to do with Don Imus calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball team whores for no apparent reason other than the crime of being mostly black I do not know. In any case, we're seeing a pretty quick creep of this collective responsibility thing. Because many of the women are black, and rap is a black thing, and some rappers use the word "ho," it's absurd to focus on Don Imus calling these women a bunch of whores without pointing out that other people have used the word ho in other contexts. Or something. I really can't follow the logic.
Atrios says he can't follow the logic probably in sarcasm, but I will spell it out anyway:
Kurtz's point is that if some black men call black women hos then it must be ok for white men to do so. Because black men "own" black women the same way white men "own" white women. So saying "ho" isn't racist, because black guys do it, too. See?
This was yet another simple answer to simple questions as Atrios used to say...