It would have been charitable to think that The Atlantic’s appalling recent piece likening the rosary, the popular Catholic devotional, to an AR-15 rifle and painting a dark picture of armed, rosary-praying Catholics ready to unleash papal mayhem on the peaceful citizenry was the product of a writer with no ideas and a looming deadline. As it turns out, however, the author of the piece, Daniel Panneton, wasn’t just throwing something at the wall and hoping it would stick long enough for him to collect a paycheck. On the contrary, he does this sort of thing for a living.
Mia Cathell over at Townhall revealed Tuesday that when he isn’t cowering in fear over praying Catholics, Panneton is Manager of the Online Hate Research & Education Project, which is, notes Cathell, “an 18-month venture funded by a generous $340,000 grant from the Canadian government’s Anti-Racism Action Program.” When you’ve got that kind of government funding, you’ve got to come up with the goods. Can’t find enough actual hate? Well, any old thing will do. Even rosaries.
