John Roderick, a musician, podcast singer and lead singer of The Long Winters, who called him „Bean Dad“ after a thread spread on Twitter about his daughter, who is struggling to use a can opener, Tuesday apologized on their website.
In the thread, Roderick said he let his daughter struggle for hours to open a can of beans unaided, only giving her vague hints as she tried to teach herself how to use the opener.
After his thread went viral, Roderick initially insulted critics who suggested he was a bad parent.
But as scrutiny intensified and old racist and anti-Semitic tweets reappeared, Roderick deactivated his Twitter account. He wrote at the top of his apology he did so „in a panic“.
Roderick wrote, „I had to think about what I had done and the harm it had caused, and my mind was clouded by the unprecedented flow of new information.“ „I want to acknowledge the injuries I caused and fix them. I have a lot to atone for. The insensitivity of my parental story and the legacy of the hurtful language of the past are two deep failures. I want to confront them directly.“
In the thread, Roderick said he suggested his 9-year-old daughter make the beans after she ordered lunch. When she said she did not know how to open the can opener, he pleaded with her to find out on her own rather than showing her how to use the can opener. He described it as a teachable moment.
But, to the dismay of readers, Roderick went on to describe his daughter who, despite being hungry and weird, had been struggling with the editorial for hours. In the end, after six hours, he said his daughter finally opened the box.
„Bean Dad“ went viral on Twitter on Sunday – the day after the topic was published – with people criticizing Roderick for letting his daughter starve for hours and saying all he taught her was that she couldn’t go to her father for answers.
“My story about my daughter and the can of beans was badly told. I did not share how much we laughed, and how we had a bowl of pistachios all day while we worked on the problem, or that we had Roderick writing in his apology, ‚They had a full breakfast together a few hours ago.‘ ‚ All day in the room she takes turns laughing at us and asking us to remain calm while she works on her laptop.
Some likened the thread to the abuse they suffered as children at the hands of their parents, while others still worried that Roderick might set his daughter up for a difficult relationship with food.
He wrote, „I was ignorant, insensitive to the message that the comic character of my“ pedantic father „is indistinguishable from how abusive parents behave, talk and think.“ „… I re-read the story and clearly saw that I framed it very poorly, and very insensitive. Bean Dad, full of bragadocio and pretentious, was hurting people. I brought an abusive parent that a lot of people realized from life.“
He said he wished that no abusive parents existed and that no one was raised by someone who would „torture them physically or morally.“
He wrote: „I deeply regret that I caused more harm in the world, to prolong or exacerbate it through resistance and fickle response when confronted, and to remove my Twitter feed yesterday instead of facing the music.“
Roderick wrote, „For the many racist, anti-Semitic, hurtful, slanderous tweets from my early days on Twitter, I can only say this: all of those tweets were meant to be sarcastic and satirical.“ He added that he believes that being an ally of marginalized communities means „taking the insults of the oppressors and turning them around to make fun of racism, sexism, homophobia and bigotry.“
Roderick wrote that he was offended by „my incredibly insensitive use of sexual assault language in casual banter. It was a lazy and damaging ideology, and I continued to believe long after the point I should have known better because I was a hipster thinker of a diverse community, it was It is good for me to joke and spread insults in this context. That was not the case. „
