ESPN’s Britt McHenry is no amateur when it comes to insulting others. The viral video of her berating a parking lot attendant, which led to her immediate one week suspension, has led to another incident surfacing in which she seemingly went off on another woman for no reason.
AL.com has the details:
Last month, Sarah Sparkman, an Arkansas-based attorney, was having a conversation on Twitter about the sexualization of women in sports broadcasting. Sparkman, who majored in journalism in college, took issue with female journalists being branded more as sexual objects than for their talents.
Following an exchange between Sparkman and some of her followers, one person mentioned McHenry’s name. The person didn’t utilize McHenry’s Twitter handle (@BrittMcHenry) — so it didn’t pop up in her mentions feed — but the ESPN reporter apparently found it and jumped into the conversation.
Sparkman blogged about the incident, and reading it is very disconcerting. McHenry went off the rails, saying that she could be hot and smart at the same time (something Sparkman never disagreed with) and that Sparkman herself must be an ugly hater. The point Sparkman was trying to make was that many female journalists in sports are sexualized and their intelligence is overlooked. McHenry took that point and ran with it 97 miles in the wrong direction, blasting Sparkman while pointing out that she managed to graduate in three years, with a masters, while also modeling. (You’d think someone with a masters would have a better grasp of reading comprehension, but I digress). Here were some of McHenry’s tweets, you can read the full exchange at the link above.
Now McHenry’s ugly incident with the parking attendant is bringing some skeletons out of the closet with people seeing her true non-television personality. While her exchange with Sparkman may have flown under the radar last month, it now looks to be part of a pattern of behavior. I can only hope McHenry takes her suspension seriously and really thinks about how her interactions with others are going be scrutinized to the nth degree for the immediate future.
UPDATE: Predictably, there’s been even more about McHenry beginning to emerge. Deadspin posted a collection of tweets and anonymous stories on McHenry’s personal behavior. NJ.com went through her personal blog and ripped it to shreds. This doesn’t appear to be going away for her any time soon.
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