Ricky Gervais is Not a Twat

Satire or bigotry? Where does one end, the other begin?

I love stand-up comedy. Lately it keeps disappointing me - it's a flip of the coin whether it'll be genuinely funny, or mediocre. But having come of age with the likes of Steven Wright, Jerry Seinfeld and Billy Crystal, I keep on hoping, keep on coming back.

I went into Ricky Gervais' new Netflix special "Humanity" with great skepticism and low expectations. Ricky's whole shtick centers on being an insensitive, tone-deaf 'twat.' (Brits use the term "twat" to mean "a person regarded as stupid or obnoxious.")

Seven minutes into his one-hour special, Gervais went into a transphobic joke. No, not a joke - a rant. A transphobic manifesto. A rationalization of his Golden-Globes joke, with a loving, lingering self-congratulatory delight at his own cleverness that carried on for a full ten minutes (16% of the show), complete with repeated deadnaming, and a dismissive, demeaning portrayal of the trans experience. His rant then morphed into comparing gender transition (which he reduced to a dumbified caveman’s interpretation of the GRS surgical procedure) to becoming a chimp, and then to comparing women to chimps.

My quandary: is Ricky Gervais a twat? Or is he just building an on-stage persona of a twat?