Danger! interim host and presumed heir of Alex Trebek, Ken Jennings, did not have the best week online. Just before New Year’s Eve, the champion apologized for old, insensitive tweets – including a six-year-old report in which he wrote: “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.” And on Sunday, Jennings tried to defend his podcast host, John Roderick – whose Twitter nickname is now ‘Bean Dad’ thanks to a bizarre and controversial anecdote that some have labeled child abuse, and whose own bad tweets have also surfaced .
Over the weekend, Roderick shared a long anecdote in which he said his nine-year-old daughter told him she was hungry, and he responded by telling her to make baked beans – to react with dismay when he realized that he never taught her. how to use a can opener. Instead of helping his child prepare the meal, he let her struggle for six hours alone with the device in a ‘Learning Moment’ – a process that he said was ‘tears’ and that his daughter ‘in’ collapsed ‘.[ing] in a frustrated hope. ‘
As The Hollywood Reporter note, some Twitter users call the ordeal ‘child abuse’. Roderick defends himself, writing: ‘Somehow my story about teaching my daughter how to use a can opener and overcome her frustration, went out on a twitter version where I am accused of child abuse. This is amazing. My child is doing well. He added: ‘The best part of the relationship between parents and parents is that they constantly think about how it deprives my child of six HOURS abuse. Six hours is the time between meals. Lunch lunch, dinner at six o’clock. They literally say CHILD ABUSE. He has since deleted his account.
But the controversy has also led some on social media to bring up others, more about Roderick’s posts – posting snapshots of it THR notes, contains anti-Semitic messages and defends the use of racist and homophobic insults.
Jennings, who co-hosts the podcast Omnibus with Roderick, initially joking about the writer-musician’s fiasco “Bean Dad”, tweet, “Extremely jealous and annoyed that my co-host for podcasts is going to be a dictionary entry and I never will.”
“If it reassures anyone,” he said added, “I personally know John as (a) a loving and attentive father who (b) tells story-by-effect stories about his own irritability on ten podcasts a week. This site is so stupid. ”
When confronted about Roderick’s ‘strange anti-Semitic shit’, Jennings reacted“If we now search through old tweets, it’s pretty easy to find what he actually thinks about anti – Semitism. On our show, he is always the pro-Israel one! ‘He later added that “there is no ash where any anti-Semitic screenshot is a real opinion I have ever heard from him.”
But many on social media have not been sad for a long time – especially since Jennings apologized for his own misleading posts in a thread that some consider sincere and others a PR maneuver, as he shares Trebek’s old host work regard.
On Wednesday Jennings wrote, ‘Hey, I just wanted to share the fact that I’ve definitely tweeted some unartial and insensitive things on Twitter over the years. Sometimes they worked as jokes in my head and I was shocked to see them reading on the screen. ”
He prosecute: “In the past, I would usually leave bad tweets behind, just so I could think. At least they can lead to clever answers and even advocacy. To wipe it off felt like it was a mistake. ‘
‘But I think the practice may have given the impression that I was standing by every failed joke I’ve posted here. Not at all! “He added. (He apologizefor example for the wheelchair tweet in 2018.) “Sometimes “I said stupid things in a dumb way and I want to apologize to people who (rightly!) Are offended,” Jennings wrote. “It was not my intention to hurt anyone, but it does not matter: I nodded and I’m sorry.”
“If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we need to be kinder to each other,” Jennings said. ended. “I look forward to going to 2021 with that in mind.”
A representative for Sony and Danger! did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.