Ken Jennings, who holds the all-time record “Jeopardy!” won games, stumbled from one Twitter controversy to another after coming to a defense of a man who called the internet ‘Bean Dad’.
Jennings was recently announced as the first host of ‘Jeopardy!’ after the death of longtime host Alex Trebek, but after the announcement in November, insensitive tweets by Jennings resurfaced.
One tweet from 2014 reads: ‘Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair’, while another in 2015 contained a joke about a terminally ill ‘Star Wars’ fan who had to watch ‘The Force Awakens’ before he died. Jennings had earlier refused to delete these tweets, saying it “could lead to clever responses and even advocacy. If it is removed, it feels like liming a mistake.”
But this time, apparently in preparation for his January 11 presentation, Jennings has a full apology on Twitter, writes: “Sometimes I said stupid things in a dumb way and I want to apologize to people who were (rightly!) offended. It was not my intention to hurt anyone, but it does not matter not: I was scorched and I’m really sorry. ‘
Fast forward to this past New Year’s weekend, and Jennings is under fire again for tweet in support of his “Omnibus” podcast co-presenter John Roderick, amid a viral Twitter scandal. This is a wild, tedious tale, so here’s what you need to know:
Who is ‘Bean Dad’?
John Roderick is the lead singer and guitarist of the band The Long Winters and was previously a tour member of the band Harvey Danger. He also hosts or co-hosts several podcasts, including ‘Roderick On The Line’, ‘Road Work’ and Jennings’ ‘Omnibus’.
On Sunday, Roderick tweeted in a thread that his 9-year-old daughter came to him and said she was hungry. He told her to make some beans, and when she asked how, he said, “Open a can and put it in a pot.” Then he realized that she had never used a can opener before.
Roderick tells her, “study the parts, study the can, determine what the inventor of the can opener thought when they tried to solve this problem.” Time passes and his daughter becomes increasingly frustrated because, as Roderick put it, “spatial orientation, process visualization, and order of action are not things she is … intuitive.”
He then said to her, ‘Honey, none of us will eat another bite today before we go into this can of beans,’ before returning to a puzzle he had been picking all day. Finally, after ‘six hours on and off’, and Roderick’s daughter finally tells her father she hates him, she successfully removes the lid. They feast on beans, and Roderick takes to Twitter to exhale what he, of course, considered his greatest learning moment as an “Apocalypse Dad.”
The story went viral, as did the phrases “Bean Dad,” “She’s Nine,” and “SIX HOURS.” While some parents did see Roderick’s story as a triumph to instill perseverance or innovation, the internet has done a lot. . . did not agree. Film critic and author Lindsay Ellis summed it up briefly:
“Just because I can ‘t stop thinking about Bean Dad, not even, I hope to forget about him tomorrow,” Ellis said. “But it’s pretty obvious to me that he knew a little deep down that he was very worthy of his daughter, and so he took it to Twitter to reformulate his skill as a teachable moment.”
While Twitter users have gone back and forth on the question of whether Roderick was emotionally abusive, his self-magnifying thread definitely paints him as a sort of ‘Bad Dad’ of West Anderson style. I could easily imagine an erased scene from ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ where Richie and Chas in muted times remember the time Royal locked them in the kitchen with a can opener and a can of baked beans and the family did not want to eat until they figured out how to use it. Not necessarily insulting, but definitely meant to belittle in the effort to make a point or deliver a show.
Roderick seems to be handling this even briefly. “I know I’m angry,” he wrote on Twitter. “I know it’s parenting theater in some ways.” But then he started joking about people who interviewed him on Twitter – though not in front of some of him old racist, anti-Semitic and capable tweets have resurfaced.
“Every time I use a word like ‘gay’ or ‘delayed’, someone reminds me that the words are hurtful to me, ‘ he wrote in 2011. He also wrote things like, “Jews ruin everyone’s pleasure,” jokes openly about rape, saying, “The founders mean the US as a white homeland.”
Roderick quickly deleted his account and, as journalist Helen Kennedy put it, “Bean Dad’s daughter ran his can-opener experiment longer than he could resist through Twitter criticism. One assumes he learned a lot to to be tested in this way. ”
His account was reactivated on Monday afternoon, although many of the tweets in question have since been removed.
Where does Ken Jennings come in?
Okay, do you remember how Jennings and Roderick co-hosted a podcast? Jennings decides to come to Roderick’s aid amid the online kerfuffle, initially only commenting on his parenting style; that was just when Roderick’s problematic tweets circulated.
“If it reassures anyone, I personally know that John is (a) a loving and attentive father who (b) tells story-by-effect stories about his own irritability on ten podcasts a week,” Jennings tweeted. “This site is so stupid.”
But then several Twitter users asked Jennings how he felt about his co-host of racist and anti-Semitic views. He replied“If we search through old tweets now, it’s pretty easy to find what he thinks of anti-Semitism. On our program, he’s always the pro-Israel!”
As many commentators have pointed out, this means that “pro-Israel” does not necessarily mean that someone is free from anti-Semitism. Regardless, Jennings doubled down and wrote, “There is no ash where any anti-Semitic screenshot is a real opinion I’ve ever heard from him.”
Keep in mind, this is fresh from Jenning’s own recent Twitter scandal with insensitive comments, and lots of “Jeopardy!” fans reacted disappointed, and one said: “Alex Trebek would have had a stronger attitude towards racism and triviality.”
This rediscovered interest in the Change.org petition endorsing LeVar Burton as the next presenter of the game was, as Melanie McFarland of Salon reports, created to ‘Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.’ and producers Mike Richards and Harry Friedman to show how much the public loves Burton. ‘It has nearly 112,000 signatures as of the writing of this article.
Wait, why are people talking about “My brother, my brother and I”?
One of the other ramifications of this story is that Roderick’s song, “(It’s a) Departure” by John Roderick and The Long Winters, served as theme music for the popular podcast “My Brother, My Brother and Me”, a weekly comedy advice podcast by brothers Justin, Travis and Griffin McElroy.
In parallel to the Jennings drama was a call from the fans of the podcast that the hosts had to change the theme song. Unlike Jennings, however, the brothers did not hesitate.
“For reasons we’re sure you’re all aware of, we’re starting to find new music for MBMBaM. You’ll probably hear a catchy theme song in this week’s episode,” wrote the hosts on Twitter. “We are not sure what will come next, honestly, but we hope you will stay to find out.”
They further say: ‘We appreciate that John made us use one of his songs as a theme for MBMBaM for almost a decade, but his response to today’s situation is indicative of a behavioral pattern that is antithetical to the energy we have. try to bring to the things. we do, and so it’s time for us to move on. ‘
On January 4, the McElroy brothers released their first podcast since the transition. The new theme song? A remixed version of the “Rugrats” theme song with lyrics sung by Griffin McElroy.
“Here comes the McElroys, we have jokes and bits and pieces,” he sings. “We’re going to give advice and do funny sketches. Laughter, it’s in the store, come in and look. It’s time to start, it’s ‘My brother, my brother and I.’
As of Monday afternoon, Roderick is back on Twitter. His bio briefly reads “Bean Dad 2021” before being removed and his first tweet read now, “Someone had to start the year with a bang!”