A sportscaster in Chicago, US, has found himself in the penalty box after posting an offensive tweet about President Donald Trump.
It began last week when the Toronto Star sports columnist Bruce Arthur tweeted: “Donald Trump: A hateful ignorant corrupt simpleton supported by 87 percent of Republicans.”
Seeing this message and apparently agreeing, ABC-7 Chicago sportscaster Mark Giangreco chimed in. He responded with a typo-ridden tweet, which read, “so obvious, so disturbing. America exposed as a country full of simpletons who allowed this cartoon lunatic to be ‘elected’.”
Giangreco has since deleted the tweet, but not before Chicago City Wire grabbed a screenshot.
The tweet, which attacked both the president and the American people, caused consternation at the Disney-owned station that employs him.
“Sports anchor Mark Giangreco’s Twitter comments are not in line with ABC 7 Chicago’s non-partisan editorial standards,” the station’s management said on Thursday in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the matter and are taking the appropriate action.”
That action, according to the Chicago Tribune, is a multiweek suspension without pay.
This isn’t his first controversial tweet, according to the Chicago Tribune. When former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling tweeted a suggestion that CNN should be called “LPNN”, the Liberal Propaganda News Network, Giangreco responded, “Let’s change Fox News to Nazi News.”
And, in fact, his sense of humour has also caused trouble offline several times, including and incident in 1999 when he joked that former NFL player Walter Payton looked “shrivelled up,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Unknown to the public (and Giangreco), at the time, Payton was suffering from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a fatal liver disease that has since been nicknamed “Walter Payton’s Disease”.
“That hurt, it really did,” Payton later said.
What makes this incident particularly striking, though, is that it flips a familiar script. In the past few years, numerous people have been either suspended or fired from jobs as wide-ranging as political staffer to teacher’s aide to police officer for posting or making insulting (often racist) remarks about former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.
The same cannot quite be said thus far for comments on Trump.
There was one notable incident when a New York Post sports reporter was fired for comparing his inauguration to the 9/11 attacks, and, yes, a Saturday Night Live writer was suspended for tweeting that Trump’s young son Barron “will be this country’s first home-school shooter”.