Did someone finally catch the GOAT goat?
“Danger!” Champion Ken Jennings accessed Twitter to apologize for the previous “insensitive” content he shared with the platform.
In a topic posted on Wednesday afternoon, Jennings, 46, wrote a mea culpa for past jokes that he tweeted, expressing regret for “stupid things” in his past on social media.
“Hey, I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that over the years on Twitter, I definitely tweeted some uninspiring and insensitive things,” he wrote in the five-part topic. “Sometimes they acted like jokes in my head and I was dismayed to see how they read on the screen.
“In the past, I usually left bad tweets in the air just so they could be ignored. At least that way, they could lead to smart responses and even advocacy. Erasing them looked like a bleaching error, ”he continued. “But I think this practice may have given the impression that I keep all the failed jokes that I posted here. Not at all!”
Presumably, he was referring to a now deleted post from 2014 that said: “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair”, which sparked the ire of Twitter users in 2018 and led him to express “Repentance” after “public flogging”. And in 2015, he joked about a “Star Wars” fan – who had terminal cancer – who went to see the entry of the franchise “The Force Awakens” before he died. “It can’t be a good sign that all the fans who saw the new Star Wars movie died shortly after that,” wrote Jennings at the time.
In Wednesday’s tweets, Jennings seemed ready to move on with his new show: next week, he will start as a replacement for “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 80 in November.
“Sometimes I said stupid things in an idiotic way and I want to apologize to people who were (rightly) offended,” he continued in his apology. “It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone, but it doesn’t matter: I blew it and I’m really sorry.
“If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we should be kinder to each other,” he added, concluding with “I am looking forward to entering 2021 with that in mind.”
While some fans applauded him for “Owning your s – t” through the topic, others saw it simply as an opportune time to express regret, with a person suggesting, “The preemptive apology for old tweets before getting the Jeopardy show. Smart and another asking, “Is this step 1 of formally accepting the show at risk?”
Neither Jennings – who was crowned the best player of all time in “Jeopardy!” earlier this year – not any other celebrity has been confirmed as a permanent replacement for Trebek, whose final shows will air January 4-8. However, a number of names have been suggested as possibilities, including ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, who earlier this year said the job would be “fun”.