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Others who have worked with Giangreco have brushed off similar remarks as playful. Considering Burton complained to management, it’s fair to question whether management would have done anything had she not, knowing Giangreco’s persona.
Giangreco had also made a few other missteps over the years, some of which led to suspensions from the station.
If some of Giangreco’s previous transgressions occurred today, he wouldn’t have survived them. His most notable one came in 1999, when he said former Bears running back Walter Payton looked like Gandhi, not knowing Payton had a liver disease that would kill him that year. Giangreco apologized profusely for the mistake, and Payton called to forgive him.
In 2004, after the Pistons won the NBA title, he aired a black-and-white video of fires and joked that it was “a typical night in Detroit.” The station suspended him for week. Most recently, in 2017, Giangreco reportedly was suspended for multiple weeks without pay for calling former President Donald Trump a “cartoon lunatic” and the United States a “country full of simpletons” in a tweet.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/chicago-sports-anchor-mark-giangreco-officially-out-at-abc-7-following-on-air-joke-about-colleague/ar-BB1eyr3B?ocid=msedgdhp
>oh…the hurtful words. they hurt. they really hurt.