ESPN announcer Britt McHenry released a firestorm on The Interwebs after her foul-mouthed rant at a towing company clerk went viral.

For her Mean Girl outburst McHenry received a short one-week suspension, which USA Today Sportswriter Chris Chase called a “slap on the wrist” and then proceeded to label her the “Christian Bale of a new generation.”

Interestingly, on March 29, prior to the incident, McHenry posted this at her Facebook page.

“Take the high road and be nice to people. Amazing how a small kind gesture can go so far, yet similarly so can the impact of negative words. Don’t choose the latter.”

Oh, the irony. It burns.

Of course McHenry has her defenders. At The Federalist, Rich Cromwell, while noting that “. . . McHenry is hot, both physically and temperamentally. . . “, deplored the pile-on propensities of the Internet, and insisted that the towing company deserved her fury anyway. Behold, Exhibit A, from Twitter and Yelp.

Towing a car with children and a dog in it and other highlights from the Yelp page of Britt McHenry's nemesis pic.twitter.com/FeRLbtDGo6

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) April 16, 2015

Also writing at The Federalist, Jonathan Last claimed that McHenry’s outburst “makes sense,” because his wife had her car towed from the condominium lot several years ago when they lived in Old Town Alexandria. That excuses her tirade.

Okay, I get it. No one likes tow companies. Cromwell called them ‘grifters.’ But I recoiled when I saw the video of McHenry spewing some very ugly, very personal attacks on the tow company clerk. It’s one thing to criticize a company’s behavior. It’s another to ridicule the looks, teeth, weight, and intelligence of an employee who’s trying to earn a living at a business no one respects.

I wonder how dear Britt would’ve handled Chicago’s Lincoln Towing Service?

Back in 1960’s and 70’s, the Lincoln Towing Service was notorious for towing cars illegally and threatening their owners. Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko wrote a series of articles about owner Ross Cascio’s shady operation, and while Cascio tried to sue Royko twice, he failed.

Enter Chicago folk singer Steve Goodman.

Goodman was a fixture on the Chicago folk scene, and entered the national spotlight after Arlo Guthrie did a cover of Goodman’s classic song City of New Orleans (which in my humble opinion paled in comparison with Goodman’s more upbeat original version).

Rumor had it that Goodman’s car was towed away by Lincoln Towing. So he handled the issue with humor and creativity: he wrote a song about it in 1972, calling it The Lincoln Park Pirates. Here’s a live performance from 1977.

Steve Goodman passed away in 1984 at the young age of 36. He succumbed to leukemia, and even while dying of the disease he continued to demonstrate the wry humor of Lincoln Park Pirates by calling himself  “Cool Hand Leuk,” and writing a song entitled A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.

Perhaps Britt McHenry could learn some lessons from a long-gone folk singer who endured a much heavier burden than a towed vehicle. Life can sometimes suck, and those with grace and wisdom have learned to handle it with poise, and sometimes, humor.