Ken Jennings Defends Podcast Co-Host John Roderick Amid ‘Bean Dad’ Storm
Ken Jennings is caught up in yet another controversy just as Jeopardy! fans prepare to say a tearful goodbye to Alex Trebek.
The final five episodes starring Trebek begin Monday night, January 4. But it’s the show’s most famous winner — who will soon be the show’s first guest host, as well as a regular on another game show, the upcoming The Chase — has been stealing a lot of the headlines, and not in the way he would necessarily want.
Last week Jennings apologized for “insensitive” tweets he had written in the past that resurfaced online. Now, he has jumped to the defense of his Omnibus podcast co-host, musician John Roderick, dubbed “Bean Dad” on social media, who sparked a backlash after anti-semitic comments were revealed and for posting on Twitter a story (the deleted tweets have been archived here) about teaching his 9-year-old daughter to use a can opener.
Roderick had shared that he’d forced his daughter to work at opening a can of beans for six hours because she didn’t know how to properly work the kitchen tool.
After getting slammed online, an unrepentant Roderick defiantly called himself “Bean Dad” on Twitter and said, “My kid is fine everybody.”
Roderick was also accused online of making homophobic, ant-semitic and racist comments in older posts.
Ken, however, defended his co-host on Twitter.
“Extremely jealous and annoyed that my podcast co-host is going to be a dictionary entry and I never will,” he joked.
In a second tweet, Jennings wrote described Roderick as “a loving and attentive dad.”
If this reassures anyone, I personally know John to be (a) a loving and attentive dad who (b) tells heightened-for-effect stories about his own irascibility on like ten podcasts a week. This site is so dumb.
— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) January 3, 2021
But then Jennings found himself under attack on social media.
https://twitter.com/jonrosenberg/status/1345878492592943111?s=20
You know, I really thought your apology last week was a good one. But now that I see the kind of people you promote I’m not sure you meant a word of it. pic.twitter.com/okNtjfDSK6
— Kimberly (@kimbrrlyclaire) January 3, 2021
With Jennings set to become a regular presence on television, this likely will not be the end of the story. Stay tuned.
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