BEAN DAD, MEAN DAD

There’s a new person to hate on Twitter – Bean Dad. Musician and podcaster John Roderick wrote a series of tweets telling the story of how his 9-year-old daughter asked how a can opener worked, and Roderick told her to go figure it out for herself. She spent six hours trying to open a can of baked beans. He told her, “The little device is designed to do one thing: open cans. Study the parts, study the can, figure out what the can-opener inventor was thinking when they tried to solve this problem. I knew this would be a challenge. But it was a rainy weekend.” Roderick called it a “teaching moment.” Twitter called him a monster and an abusive parent. One person wrote, “He sounds like the sort of dad who likes beating his kids at games, making them cry, says it’s to ‘toughen them up’ when really he’s just an obnoxious git who uses his kids to make himself feel big.” She eventually got the can open, and now, Roderick says, “She wants to open every can in the house.”
(* A side note to this story is that John Roderick co-hosts a podcast with Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy champion who is hosting the show starting next week. Jennings wrote, “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.”)
* I’m supposed to know what irascibility means?
* The girl didn’t know beans, but now she does.
* He didn’t ridicule her about not knowing how to use a can opener. But he DID ridicule her for spending six hours on it instead of just watching a YouTube video.
* How do you think cave men learned how to open a can of beans? They didn’t have anyone teaching them.
* PHONE TOPIC: Is Bean Dad a mean dad, or a smart dad?