Maybe they should teach how to be a decent human being at the Medill School of Journalism! Britt McHenry, the former WJLA reporter sports reporter turned D.C.-based sideline reporter for ESPN, showed her true colors when her car was towed in Arlington earlier this month. And boy, are they UGLY.
McHenry berated the towing company employee, and the employee then posted the video to LiveLeak. You can see McHenry saying things like, “I’m on television and you’re in a fucking trailer, honey”; “I’m in the news sweetheart, I will fucking sue this place”; “So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing?”; and “Lose some weight, baby girl.”
The attendant reportedly wrote on Facebook, “[W]hen I post the video you’ll say I deserved to be called fat. Bottom line is she got towed. She should not have left her car unattended in a private lot to patronize another bar. Be angry or upset, you don’t insult someone’s looks because you think you’re above them.” The attendant also claims that McHenry arrived two hours after the restaurant, which owns the lot where her car was parked, closed for business.
McHenry Tweeted an apology—”In an intense and stressful moment, I allowed my emotions to get the best of me and said some insulting and regrettable things. As frustrated as I was, I should always choose to be respectful and take the high road. I am so sorry for my actions and will learn from this mistake”—but of course, that came after she complained about the towing incident on Twitter. Yesterday, ESPN decided to suspend her for a week.
USA Today’s Chris Chase calls the week suspension an “embarrassing slap on the wrist”:
While Bill Simmons gets a three-week suspension for calling out his bosses and Tony Kornheiser is set aside for two weeks for commenting on Hannah Storm’s skirt, McHenry is shelved for just seven days. It’s a misguided system of justice: ESPN considers ESPN-on-ESPN smack-talk to be worse than ESPN sneering at the rest of the world. It’s a joke…
While McHenry’s apology starts off with a mini-defense of herself, it eventually hits the right notes. But it’s all phony. This isn’t someone having a bad day. This isn’t someone frustrated by an employee at a tow-truck operator.
We’ve all been there and (hopefully) didn’t denigrate the man or woman responsible for not having a degree, nor rip on a cashier for simply doing her job. A bad day is cursing at someone or driving away from that booth and quickly flipping the bird. Those are the sort of slip-ups that make us human. What McHenry did is an attitude based on power and entitlement.
I’m sure countless famous people have done the same thing, without the misfortune of being videotaped. But you can’t feel bad for McHenry on that one: She apparently kept going after she knew the video camera was running…
[She] reamed out an employee who was presumably doing her job, playing the old “don’t you know who I am?” card in the process. She used her own good looks and relative wealth and stature to belittle a woman working a gig that can’t pay much more than minimum wage.
The towing company, Advanced Towing, is known as being predatory—they even towed a car with two kids in it!
