Milwaukee Bucks guard Pat Connaughton unwittingly shared an anti-police message on celebrity app Cameo — prompting the red-faced shooting guard to issue an apology to his fans.
“Hey thin blue line, have a great holiday season,” Connaughton, 26, said in the since-deleted message on Cameo, which allows users to send “personalized shoutouts” from celebrities for cash, WITI reported. “We only back you when you come to the Fiserv. We don’t take much overall pride in the blue. Remember Brad, yeah, it was us. Have a blessed holiday once again. Sincerely, the team.”
Connaughton was seemingly clueless about the meaning behind the script he was paid $75 to read on the app, admitting he recorded the video without doing the “due diligence” before sending it out.
“I am very sorry for the Cameo video I taped the other day,” Connaughton tweeted Sunday. “I have always supported the police 100 percent, I have several relatives who are police officers, and am grateful to all of the officers who protect us everyday.
“While someone with obvious bad intentions was behind this request, I should have first researched what I was being asked to read. I deeply apologize.”
Team officials are aware of the video and are looking into it, Bucks Senior Vice President Alex Lasry told WISN.
It isn’t the first time an athlete was duped into spreading a misguided message on the platform, where users can spend $2,500 to hire celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner as a personal spokesperson – or $1,000 for the likes of actor Marlon Wayans or boxer Manny Pacquiao.
Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Brett Favre apologized in late 2018 for recording an anti-Semitic video by a group posing as a veterans organization. Favre, 50, was paid $500 to recite the message with coded hate speech from a group called the Goyim Defense League.
“You guys are patriots in my eyes,” Favre said. “So keep waking them up and don’t let the small get you down. Keep fighting too and don’t ever forget the USS Liberty and the men and women who died on that day. God bless and take care.”
The video was packed with thinly veiled anti-Semitic language, BuzzFeed News reported, with “small” standing for “small hats” – a slur for yarmulkes – and a reference to the USS Liberty, a Navy research ship accidentally attacked in 1967 by Israeli fighter jets, believing it was an Egyptian craft.
“Remember the USS Liberty,” according to the report, has become a rallying cry for conspiracy theorists who believe the attack was intentional despite denials from both the US and Israeli governments.