Jeapordy star Ken Jennings has apologized after resurfaced tweets showed him mocking disabled people, admitting that his comments were both “unartful and insensitive.”
In a lengthy Twitter thread on Wednesday evening, Jennings admitted that many of his comments, which included pointing out the sadness of a “hot person” using a wheelchair and mocking an elderly woman who had recently lost her son.
“Hey, I just wanted to own up to the fact that over the years on Twitter, I’ve definitely tweeted some unartful and insensitive things,” Jennings wrote. “Sometimes they worked as jokes in my head and I was dismayed to see how they read on screen.”
He contineud:
In the past, I’d usually leave bad tweets up just so they could be dunked on. At least that way they could lead to smart replies and even advocacy. Deleting them felt like whitewashing a mistake. But I think that practice may have given the impression I stand by every failed joke I’ve ever posted here. Not at all!
Sometimes I said dumb things in a dumb way and I want to apologize to people who were (rightfully!) offended. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone, but that doesn’t matter: I screwed up, and I’m truly sorry. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we should be kinder to one another. I look forward to heading into 2021 with that in mind.
Last month, Sony Pictures Television announced that Jennings would step in as an interim host for the program following the death of legendary host Alex Trebek from pancreatic cancer. Shortly after, Twitter users, including actress Yvette Nicole Brown, expressed their anger at the decision.
Jennings had previously addressed his tweet about the hot person in a wheelchair back in 2018, claiming he personally apologized to those who reached out to him. “I never did a public flogging for this but I did apologize personally to angry/hurt people who reached out personally,” he wrote at the time. “It was a joke so inept that it meant something very different in my head [and] I regret the ableist plain reading of it.”
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