Of local interest in today's Globe is a story on WBUR, the PBS radio station owned by Boston University, but run until recently as the personal fiefdom of its former general manager, Jane Christo. Christo's lawyer states that "The reality is that oversight of WBUR's financial affairs, personnel practices, legal and contractual policies is and was rigorously determined by Boston University."

Later even more hilariously, the BU Veep who allegedly oversaw the operation of the radio station says '''I have never had a complaint by an employee about Jane, [and] I've never had anybody criticize Jane who were members of the [WBUR] advisory board."

"See no evil", indeed! Take a management hint, sir, that nobody complains too much about dictators when they are known to be ruthless. I guess he never tried asking Christopher Lydon about how it was to work for Christo.

Finally a story that conservative Christians are trying to put the mention of Christmas back into what has become "the Holiday Season", including local boycotts of stores that refuse to identify the Christmas holiday.

What I find interesting about our culture's hedging on this point is that the religious meaning of Christian holidays is not a topic that is mentionable in polite public or press conversations, and certainly not in schools! One can respectfully mention the religious significance of Hanukkah or even Kwanzaa, but discussion of Christmas is largely limited to Rudolph and Santa, while Easter is all eggs and bunnies.

A note to slower-learning Democrats: becoming the party of Scrooge will not help you win more states in 2008.

From Squaring the Boston Globe