Ken Jennings, who holds the all-time record for “Jeopardy!” games won, stumbled from one controversy on Twitter to another after defending a man the internet dubbed “Pai Bean”.
Jennings was recently announced as the first guest presenter for “Jeopardy!” after the death of longtime host Alex Trebek, but after the announcement in November, Jennings’ insensitive tweets reappeared.
A 2014 tweet said, “Nothing is sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair”, while another in 2015 included a joke about a terminally ill “Star Wars” fan who was able to watch “The Force Awakens” before die. Jennings had previously refused to delete these tweets, saying they “could lead to smart responses and even advocacy. Deleting them seemed like a mistake.”
But this time, apparently in preparation for his performance from January 11, Jennings issued a complete apologies on Twitter, writing: “Sometimes I said stupid things in a stupid way and I want to apologize to people who were (rightly!) offended. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone, but it doesn’t matter: I blew it, and I’m deeply sorry. ”
Moving forward to the last New Year weekend, Jennings is under pressure again for tweeting in support of “Omnibus” podcast co-host John Roderick, amid a viral scandal on Twitter. It’s a wild and complicated story, so here’s what you need to know:
Who is “Bean Dad”?
John Roderick is the lead singer and guitarist for the band The Long Winters and was a tour member of the band Harvey Danger. It also hosts or co-hosts several podcasts, including “Roderick On The Line”, “Road Work” and “Omnibus” by Jennings.
On Sunday, Roderick tweeted on a topic that his 9 year old daughter came to him and said he was hungry. He told her to make some beans and when she asked how, he said, “Open a can and put it in a pan.” Then he realized that she never had to use a can opener before.
Roderick tells her to “study the parts, study the can, find out what the inventor of the can opener was thinking when he tried to solve the problem”. Time goes by and her daughter gets more and more frustrated because, as Roderick said, “spatial orientation, visualization of the process and order of operation are not things that she … senses”.
He then said to her, “Honey, none of us are going to eat any more today until we get into this can of beans,” before returning to a puzzle he had stirred all day. Finally, after “six hours on and off,” and Roderick’s daughter finally telling her father that she hates him, she successfully removes the cap. They feast on beans, and Roderick accesses Twitter to report breathlessly what he obviously saw as his greatest teaching moment as a “Father of the Apocalypse”.
The story went viral, as did the phrases “Pai Feijão”, “she is nine years old” and “SIX HOURS”. Although some parents saw Roderick’s story as a triumph for instilling perseverance or innovation, much of the internet. . . did not agree. Lindsay Ellis, film critic and author summed it up succinctly so:
“Just because I can’t stop thinking about Bean Dad, even though I hope to forget about him tomorrow,” said Ellis. “But it’s pretty obvious to me that, deep down, he knew he was being s ** ttty with his daughter, which is why he took to Twitter to rephrase his s ** ttty as a teachable Moment.”
While Twitter users came and went about whether Roderick was emotionally abusive, his self-aggrandizement segment definitely paints him as a kind of Wes Anderson-style “bad dad”. I could easily imagine a scene excluded from “The Royal Tenenbaums” in which Richie and Chas quietly recall the time that Royal locked them in the kitchen with a can opener and a can of baked beans and didn’t let the family eat until they figured out how to use it. Not necessarily abusive, but definitely with the intention of belittling in an effort to demonstrate a point of view or put on a show.
Roderick even seemed to deal with it briefly. “I know I’m pissing,” he wrote on Twitter. “I know this is the parents’ theater in some ways.” But then he started attacking people who questioned him on Twitter – although not before some of his old racist, anti-Semitic and capable tweets have been revived.
“Every time I use a word like ‘gay’ or ‘retarded’, some retarded gay reminds me that those words hurt,” he wrote in 2011. He also wrote things like, “Jews ruin everyone’s fun,” he joked openly about the rape and said, “The founders intended the United States to be a white homeland.”
Roderick quickly deleted his account and, as journalist Helen Kennedy said, “Bean’s father’s daughter resisted the can-opener experience for longer than he resisted Twitter criticism. He is presumed to have learned a lot by being tested from it. way.”
His account was reactivated on Monday afternoon, although many of the tweets in question were deleted.
Where does Ken Jennings enter?
Okay, so remember how Jennings and Roderick co-host a podcast together? Jennings decided to help Roderick through the online confusion, initially just commenting on his parenting style; that was exactly when Roderick’s problematic tweets were circulating.
“If it reassures anyone, I personally know that John is (a) a loving and caring father who (b) tells intense stories to the effect on his own irascibility at about ten podcasts a week,” Jennings tweeted. “This site is so stupid.”
But then several Twitter users asked Jennings how he felt about the racist and anti-Semitic views of his co-hosts. He replied, “If we are looking for words in old tweets right now, it is very easy to find out what he really thinks about anti-Semitism. In our program, he is always pro-Israel!”
As many commentators have pointed out, being “pro-Israel” does not necessarily mean that someone is free from anti-Semitism. Regardless, Jennings doubled down, writing, “There is no axis on which any anti-Semitic image represents any real opinion I have ever heard of him.”
Keep in mind that this is recent from Jenning’s recent Twitter scandal involving insensitive comments and many “Jeopardy!” fans responded disappointed, one stating: “Alex Trebek would have a stronger position on racism and bigotry.”
That interest rekindled in the Change.org petition endorsing LeVar Burton as the next host of the game show, which was, as reported by Salon Melanie McFarland, created to “show Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and producers Mike Richards and Harry Friedman how much love the public has for Burton. “He had almost 112,000 signatures at the time of this writing.
Wait, so why are people also talking about “My brother, my brother and me”?
One of the other branches of this story is that Roderick’s song, “(It’s a) Departure”, by John Roderick and The Long Winters, served as the theme for the popular podcast “My Brother, My Brother and Me”, a weekly comedy podcast of advice from brothers Justin, Travis and Griffin McElroy.
Alongside Jennings’ drama, there was a call from podcast fans to presenters to change the theme song. Unlike Jennings, however, the brothers did not hesitate.
“For reasons we are sure everyone knows, we are starting to find new songs for MBMBaM. You will probably hear a filler theme song in this week’s episode,” the hosts wrote on Twitter. “We are not sure what will come after that, honestly, but we hope you stick around to find out.”
They continued, “We thank John for letting us use one of his songs as the MBMBaM theme for almost a decade, but his response to today’s situation is emblematic of a pattern of behavior that is contrary to the energy we try to bring to things. we do, so it’s time 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.
“There come the McElroys, we have jokes and bits,” he sings. “Let’s give advice and make funny sketches. Laughter, it’s reserved, come inside and see. It’s time to start, it’s ‘My brother, my brother and me.'”
On Monday afternoon, Roderick is back on Twitter. Her biography briefly said “Bean Dad 2021” before being deleted and her first tweet now reads, “Someone had to start the year hard!”