British Nanny Fired for Blogging
It all comes full circle, doesn’t it? A reader, perhaps the only reader, asked if I’d seen the story of the nanny fired for blogging. Certainly a bitter irony on a day when The Board is threatening this correspondent with a Judith Miller style Babylonian captivity. It goes to show how writers are treated when the Google page rank of significance (GPRS) offers a goose egg. Anyway, I did read the article in the NY Times (GPRS Very High) choked on my Wheaties, and wondered how the nanny in question appreciated her former employer rendering sour details of her inner life in the cold font of frontline journalism.
Helaine Olen employed a twenty six year old teacher as a nanny. Apparently bruised by the experience of having a previous babysitter, her word, not mine, become pregnant by her longtime boyfriend, Olen decided to nip her nanny’s budding fascination with Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, that obscure object of desire. One wonders if in the Olen household pregnancy results from watching adorable conservative commentators on television. Or what might result from the nanny’s unusual affection for the New Yorker. A dangling modifier in the Times piece led me to believe that the toddler, not the nanny, had started a blog. You can’t fire a toddler.
Too put upon to read Paul Krugman(GPRS Unknown) Ms. Olen experienced envy as she read the online diary of her nanny. She describes teetering on the decision point until mysterious tummy aches suffered by her nanny resulted in Judgment Day. By the end of the piece she had exposed her nanny as a fairly typical young woman who was having more than fun than her boss. Cute story. There’s a happy ending in which Ms. Olen assures us that her erstwhile employee has landed on her feet, and that Olen continues to read the blog, the very blog that cost the young woman her job.
Seneca once said, “life’s finer days for us poor humans, fly first.” That’s right, Ms. Olen. Write an article about Seneca.