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abaya · 12-11-2006, 05:37 PM

Here's some follow-up from today's paper... it appears that the rabbi "did not mean for this to happen." Bah, humbug. Do you believe him?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...irport11m.html

Quote:

Airport's trees stoking "war on Christmas"

By Stuart Eskenazi
Seattle Times staff reporter

The departure of Christmas tree displays at main passageways at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — the Port of Seattle's response to a local rabbi's insistence that an electric menorah also be put up — is accelerating into an international spectacle in the so-called "war on Christmas."

And that is not what Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky wanted.

"I am devastated, shocked and appalled at the decision that the Port of Seattle came to," he said Sunday. As news coverage about the airport's trees spread from CNN to ABC to the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, Bogomilsky on Sunday began to receive hateful messages from people holding him responsible for the removal of the trees.

Harvey Grad, the rabbi's attorney, said the vitriol against Bogomilsky is misplaced, emphasizing that the rabbi neither objected to the trees nor said he found them offensive.

"The last thing we need is anyone thinking that Jews want to end the celebration of Christmas on public property," Grad said.

Bogomilsky is spending today on the TV talk-show circuit, continuing a media frenzy that began Saturday.

Around 4 a.m. Sunday, Port Commissioner Patricia Davis was on the phone with CNN for a live interview, joined by Bogomilsky, who works at Chabad Lubavitch, an education foundation in the University District.

This morning at 5, Davis was to be interviewed on Fox News. The controversy likely will add fuel to what Fox talk-show host Bill O'Reilly and some Christian groups have deemed a "war on Christmas," — a secularization of the traditions and name of Christmas...........