As I just said, the "ranking oppressions" is bigotry, in and of itself. That alone should be a major red-flag to anyone. But apparently, people are willing to let Chapelle off the hook when his version of Oppression Olympics confirms their own biases.

Some jokes might just be unfunny and fall flat. But when the jokes clearly reflect prejudice on the part of the comedian, that's bigotry. Excusing their speech as "harmless" under the guise of, "Oh, they're a comedian, so they should be held to a lower standard than the rest of us" is normalizing such bigotry.

I don't believe Chapelle actually wants harm to come to transgender people themselves. But his "some of my best friends" (or, in this case, "one of my deceased best friends") approach just smacks of tokenism.