Apologizing to the public is well and good, but you also have to apologize directly to the person you wronged. And in this case, even the public apology was lousy.

This morning a video was released in which ESPN reporter Britt McHenry delivered a nasty tirade to a towing company employee. McHenry’s car had been towed from a parking lot outside an Arlington, VA restaurant. Here’s what she snarled at the employee, according to the video obtained by Sports Illustrated:

“I wouldn’t work in a scumbag place like this,” she says. “That’s all you care about, taking people’s money. With no education, no skill set, just wanted to clarify that. Do you feel good about your job?… So I can be a college dropout and do the same thing?… Maybe if I was missing some teeth they would hire me, huh?… I’m in television and you’re in a f—— trailer, honey.”

The video ends with McHenry telling the attendant to, “Lose some weight, baby girl.”

McHenry’s car may have been wrongfully towed (there have been complaints about the towing company’s business practices) but that’s still no reason to attack the cashier, Gina Michelle, personally: Her weight, her teeth, her job, her assumed poverty, her education. Yet according to Busted Coverage, McHenry still has not apologized directly to Michelle.

Let’s review. When you’re a public figure and you’ve misbehaved, your first step needs to be reaching out privately to the person you’ve wronged. Just as normal unfamous people have to! (I KNOW, so plebian.) THEN you apologize in the media.

And when you DO apologize publicly, you do not expel a turd of an apology like this one:

Where to start? This apology opens by blaming the situation (“an intense and stressful moment”) rather than taking responsibility for the words themselves. It does not specify what the “insulting and regrettable things” were, thereby minimizing their hurtfulness and viciousness. The word “regrettable” makes McHenry seem like the victim — they’re about the impact on HER, not on the woman she abused. “As frustrated as I was,” again, indicates a lack of ownership and makes the victim responsible. (Michelle did not personally tow her car. She’s a cashier. And even if she had, the fault is in the act, not in the actor. Feel free to be colorful about the company’s perceived wrongfulness in towing the car — again, we have no evidence that it was wrongfully towed, though given the company’s rock-bottom Yelp reviews, it is certainly possible — but do not go all spitefully, personally, malignantly You-Can’t-Sit-With-Us on the individual.)

McHenry also neglected to apologize for giving the clerk the finger.

ESPN suspended McHenry for a week. Maybe during her time off she’ll take a moment to apologize to the person she actually wronged. Maybe she’ll ponder the fact that calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier, and calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. Maybe she’ll think about why her behavior AND her initial apology were terrible. And maybe she’ll reflect on the immortal axiom from Mean Girls, “I know it may look like I was being like a bitch, but that’s only because I was acting like a bitch.”

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