What Was "Don-O" Saying About Neil Cavuto?

One thing to be thankful for today is that Neil Cavuto, and not Glenn Beck, was reporting live from a rooftop. Another is that Cavuto had not tuned in to Imus in the Morning until just now.

Cavuto was in Washington, DC to report on today's jobs summit at the White House, where President Obama will meet with 130 CEOs, labor leaders, economists, and academics in advance a not-so-good jobs report being released tomorrow.

"The President is going to try to claim a PR offensive here and say, 'I'm on top of this,'" said Cavuto, the host of Your World on the Fox News Channel. "He's going to be trying to get ideas from these guys as to how the private sector can trigger more job growth."

As the two chatted, information about Imus's prior remarks was being fed to Cavuto, who told Imus, "You're on a question-by-question basis now." Imus shot back that his guest should stop referring to him publicly as "Don," as it displays an outright lack of respect.

"Well, Don-O, that's the way it is," Cavuto said.

Depending on how you look at it, unemployment is at around 10.2 percent right now, a figure that jumps sharply (to almost 35 percent) when narrowed to groups like young minorities. Yet at the summit, the administration will likely highlight that job loss has slowed since they took office, and that home and retail sales have improved.

Very little will come from this summit, in Cavuto's opinion, because of its location. "Most people, once they're in the White House, with the pageantry and the magic, they really forget what the hell they're there for," he said.

Since Cavuto is also the Senior Vice President of Business News and Managing Editor of the Fox Business Network, Imus asked him why anyone should care that Comcast will purchase NBC from General Electric.

Cavuto, quoting Sirius Satellite Radio's CEO Mel Karmazin as saying the deal would "compel other big media companies to either do big deals themselves, or take a look at their operations and see where they can cut costs." Dan Rather, a recent guest on Cavuto's show, had said this was a "sign of the times."

Imus said Rather is insane, and once greeted a Navajo reservation guide in Monument Valley by saying, "How ya doing, Chief?"

As the interview ended, Cavuto learned that Imus had been comparing him to a morbidly obese man photographed overflowing into the aisle on a commercial plane. Cavuto warned Imus that a large portion (pun intended) of his audience was probably rotund.

"They know they're fat, I know they're fat," said Imus. "If they want to listen or watch, wear a helmet."

It's good advice for guests, too.

-Julie Kanfer