Hey, Ken Jennings here. (Really.)

I had no idea this little blog post was going to go viral, but after reading the comments here, I wanted to clarify a couple things.

1. The idea for this came to me while looking at a few pretty great “I am the 99%” parodies online…one with Luke Skywalker, another with the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I realized I hadn’t yet seen a real (i.e. non-Photoshop) joke along those lines, and saw a golden opportunity. My thinking was that this joke worked regardless of ideology–it’s not necessarily for or against Occupy…it’s more of an absurdist joke about the idea of reframing a Jeopardy-playing computer as a tool of The Man. I’m not easily offended myself, and therefore not a big believer in “Too soon!” objections to most kinds of jokes.

2. THAT SAID…my sympathies are very much with the Occupy folks and the so-called “99%”. I almost didn’t post the pic when I realized it could be taken as trivializing the movement, so I ended up titling the post “Solidarity” (in all seriousness) and tweeting it with a message about how happy I was this week when I switched from a bank to a credit union. I honestly think these conversations about income inequality and the political clout of big financial firms are incredibly important, and we wouldn’t be having them without the OWS folks. One postscript: taken in terms of household income, I am squarely in the 99%. That’s how crazy income inequality is in this country, folks: a guy can take home not one but TWO six-figure quiz show checks in a year…and still be making half what the lowest-echelon 1-percenters are. That’s just crazy, how this elite stacks up in comparison to everyone else. Obviously I’ve been a little more recession-insulated than a lot of people, and I would never trivialize their plight. But really, we’re all in this together.

PS: Also, I didn’t donate to Prop 8.