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SEATTLE (AP) – Seattle indie rocker and podcast John Roderick has apologized for a story he told online about how his young daughter had to spend six hours learning how to use a can opener.
The musician, the best known of the group The Long Winters, wrote on Twitter last weekend about the refusal to open the can of beans for the 9-year-old because she became hungry and frustrated to the point of tears.
Roderick got rioting from people who described his actions as emotionally abusive. He initially defended himself, noting that six hours is a typical time between meals and that his child was well. But because the criticism was raised under the hashtag #BeanDad, he deleted his Twitter account.
He said on his website on Tuesday that this was a mistake and that he should have addressed the criticism mainly. He wrote that he told the story badly – if his wife was not present, that there was a lot of laughter as well as frustration, and that they ate a big breakfast and shared pistachios while she worked on the can.
He told it that way because it’s his sarcastic, comic persona, and he expected people to recognize it as a ‘bit’, he said. His experience as a white man of a straight middle class who did not live in an abusive situation caused him to misjudge the effects of his words.
“A lot of the language I used reminded people very intricately of abuse they experienced through a parent,” Roderick wrote. The idea that I would withhold food from her, or force her to solve a puzzle while she cried, or bind her hours to the task without interruption, were images of child abuse that touched many people very deeply. If I read my story, I can see what I did. ‘
“I was ignorant and insensitive to the message that my comedic persona of ‘pedant dad’ could not be distinguished from how abusive dads act, talk and think,” he added.
Roderick also apologized years ago for using racist, anti-Semitic and other insults in tweets, saying he did it ironically to mock these beliefs, but later realized it was not his place to apply such terms. .
“I had long believed beyond the point that I should have known better that because I was a hipster intellectual from a diverse community, it was good for me to make a joke and use insults in that context,” he said. he wrote. “It was not.”
Some of Roderick’s friends and peers came to his defense, including “Jeopardy!” wiz Ken Jennings, who co-hosts the podcast “Omnibus” with Roderick and “Jeopardy!” temporarily offer. next Monday.
The founder of the podcast platform Maximum Fun HQ, which hosts Roderick’s “Friendly Fire” podcast, also defended him, but the platform subsequently suspended Roderick indefinitely without pay, reports The Seattle Times.
Another popular podcast, “My Brother, My Brother and I,” announced that it would no longer use the Long Winters’ “(It’s a) Departure” as the opening song.
Roderick said he is taking a breather from public life to let the lessons of the last few days sink in.
“My language was then or now no longer appropriate, and when I think about it, it was part of my continuing education as an adult who wants to be a good ally,” he said. “Education is ongoing, and this experience will have a huge impact on the way I behave for the rest of my life.”