The context of a "joke" is really important because the context of the joke speaks volumes about what the person of the joke is saying. I am one of the people who never heard of Don Imus before this story broke out, so it'd be wrong for me to analyze him or his show overall. However, I do understand that while he was a shock jock, he also discussed serious issues on his show and had many guests who are influential in society. But either way, his "joke" about the women basketball players was wrong because of the fact that the only way to find calling a person a deragatory word funny is if you find something funny/wrong with the group the word refers to.


Now, Bill Maher argued that Imus shouldn't have been fired even if what he said was wrong and part of his argument was that if we fire people any time they say anything offensive, everyone will be walking on egg shells and people can begin being silenced for silly reasons. 

A New York Times Op-ed also stated the point that as a society we abritrarily pick and choose what to find offensive and what to deem acceptable While I agreed with the general point he makes Link, there is one point he makes that completely misses the point.
"

<blockquote>" And when Ann Coulter likewise tagged a presidential candidate last month, she paid no real price.

In fact, when Bill Maher discussed Ms. Coulter’s remarks on his HBO show, he repeated the slur no fewer than four times himself; each mention, I must note, solicited a laugh from his audience. No one called for any sort of apology from him."</blockquote>

When Ann Coulter said the word, the only way anyone would have been able to find that humorous is if people found something about gay people funny because she used the term against Edwards to give the impression of him being what she stereotypes gay people as being and believes there to be something wrong with the way gay people are. 

When Bill Maher used the term on his show, it was in response to Ann Coulter's use of the word; he was making fun of the fact that she said it and with that making fun of the way society thinks about gay people because he thinks it's ridiculous. In her case, she is using a harmful word that puts down a group and in doing so is indicating that there's something inherently funny/wrong about that group; in Maher's case, he is making fun of the people who use that kind of word because it's both ridiculous and wrong.

Similiarly, when Chris Rock appeared on Bill Maher's show the previous week, he used the N word repeatedly. But he was saying in response to Maher's question about Michael Richards using the word angrily in a comedy club. Again, it was humorous because he was making fun of the use of the word and the person who used it, not because he was saying something about the people the word is used against.

This is the same reason (partly) why double standards apply to certain language. Bill Maher also suggested that our generation may be less sensitive to racial issues because we tend to have more friends of different races and to date outside of our own races. He said that since we all joke around with our friends and the people we're dating, we're bound to make jokes about race. But there's another important difference. Some things are okay to joke about just between friends. There tends to be a shared understanding between friends and in a real friendship, no one would say anything malicious or hurtful in any way to the other friend (assuming it's a healthy friendship). 

I would not want to live in a world where no one could make a joke based on race, sex, gender or anything else for fear of being punished when there was no harm done. The reason joking about these issues is humorous is because they comment on our society and in a case like Bill Maher making fun of Coulter's use of the word, we laugh because it's ridiculous of her to think that way. When Imus made his comments about the Rutgers' players, the only way to find them funny, is if you find something funny about being a young black woman and it is because we realise this on some level that it led to the subsequent outrage and his being fired.