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Seeking not to offend, Bush's holiday season doesn't leave anyone out
"There's something for just about every faith at the White House this holiday season," reports the Associated Press. "Over the course of 24 hours last week, President Bush helped light a menorah for Hanukkah and the national Christmas tree and visited a mosque at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan."

But it's not just a campaign of inclusion, says AP writer Jennifer Loven. It's also one of exclusion. This year's Bush holiday cards don't even mention Christmas (one recipient thought it was a Thanksgiving card), and this year's White House holiday theme is a history of presidential pets.

"It is a real visible manifestation of the President teaching the importance of tolerance and openness and celebrating faith," said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The purpose is not to preach a particular faith. The purpose is to celebrate faith itself."

But before you start your angry missive about the removal of Christianity from the public square, note that cards do include a Bible verse: "For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting and his truth endureth to all generations." (Last year's verse was Psalm 27:8, 13.) And at the lighting of the tree, Bush said, "For over two millenia, Christmas has carried the message that God is with us. And because he's with us, we can always live in hope."

Pat Robertson book linked to gay sex manual at Amazon.com
Some hackers are having fun at the expense of broadcaster Pat Robertson, specifically with his new book, Six Steps to Spiritual Revival. Last Friday, Amazon quickly deleted the page's recommendations under "Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items" when it listedThe Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Men as one of the titles.

"It seemed to us that this is a rather curious juxtaposition of the two titles," Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith told technology news site CNet. "Amazon conducted an investigation and determined these results were not that of hundreds of customers going to the same items while they were shopping on the site."

In other words, someone tampered with Amazon's recommendations.

This morning, hackers were still hacking the page, and are now targeting the page's "So you'd like to … " recommendations.

But Amazon, not hackers, is responsible for some of the page's odd recommendations. On Friday, the site told visitors to the book's page that "Customers who wear clothes also shop for … Clean Underwear [and] Cheetah Print Slippers," according to the British tech site The Register.

So far, Robertson isn't commenting on the hack attack. But he had a bit of good news this week: his top racehorse and namesake, Mr. Pat, finally won its first race Friday. After several supporters complained that he was supporting gambling, Robertson promised he'd sell all of his horses by the end of November, but he still owns and races Mr. Pat, who has been a bit of a loser up to this point.

On a more serious note, Robertson has just launched CBN Newswatch, a 30-minute weekend news program designed to attract more non-Christian viewers than The 700 Club does. "It's a response to demand," senior producer Drew Parkhil told The Washington Times. "There is such a remarkable hunger out there among Christian stations, independent stations, cable networks. And it's not limited to spiritual stories. People feel like the big media may not give the whole story."

But you probably won't see stories on Amazon's faulty recommendations or the evils of horseracing.

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December (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46