Spot the incongruous detail in Helaine Olen's Times story about how she didn't like what she saw when she read the nanny's blog, or how Olen couldn't control her voyeurism but wasn't quite up to talking to her employee about her concerns:

Our former nanny, a 26-year-old former teacher with excellent references, liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker and often woke her lovers in the night by biting them. She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she'd had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend.

I love how "self-righteousness and inflated self-regard" are terms better applicable to blogging rather than to, say, writing a first-person piece in the Times about one's wistful transition from boozing, shagging youth with the weakness for 19th century literature that's so tempting in our twenties to Krugman-skimming stroller-pusher bent on monitoring "her" worker's downtime and the gender of her crushes. By the way, here's the nanny's blog (she's a nanny now, too). She responds to Olen's piece at great length:

Contrary to an essay published in the Style section of the NYTIMES, I am not a pill popping alcoholic who has promiscuous sex and cares nothing for the children for whom she works with. Nope. If you look carefully through my archives, instead you will find a young woman in her mid-twenties who decided to work as a nanny for a year while she prepared to enter the next phase of her professional life; namely the life of an academic pursuing a PhD in English Literature specifically focusing on the Late Victorian novel. But for those of you who dont want to comb through the archives, I will offer a refutation of the salacious, malicious, and really quite silly essay written by Ms. Olen.

Ms. Olen opens her essay with eye catching details designed to paint the picture of a prurient pill popper. She notes I mention biting my lovers, having sexual thoughts about Tucker Carlson, and taking sleeping pills. So, lets revisit those entries and see if they are really so titillating.
...
Yes, I mention that I want to do "dirty dirty" things to Tucker Carlson. I dont offer details. So, I am assuming that Ms. Olen's imagination ran away with her and she decided that it was very sordid. But on a closer reading of this post you will find I use Tucker Carlson, a noted conservative pundidt, as an example of how opposites attract. How intellectual tensions between two people can actually fuel romantic desire. And then I do something really really deviant. I compare my crush on him to the romantic tensions in Jane Austen's famous Pride and Prejudice. Yep, my version of the erotic has more to do with long walks and serious conversations. Of course, Ms. Olen does not point that out in her essay. My interest in literature and how I weave it through more common daily reflections would probably detract from her intent to show me as an irresponsible party girl. But there it is, on the blog she so strenuously objects to.

At least Olen will bring lapsed readers back to Sharon Olds, whose poem "Life With Sick Kids" the nanny links to, calling Olds' writing about her kids "really, some of my favorite love poems." (The blog's name, "Instructions to the Double," comes from Tess Gallagher.) What a great feud! Sunday Styles v. twentysomething blog—so iconic.

Update: There's been a lot of debate about this today, much of it emphasizing the stupidity of the blogger for telling her boss about her highly personal blog in the first place. Of course it was dumb! And borderline crazy to post stuff about her boss' family on the blog the nanny must have known her boss was reading religiously (some would say hungrily). Nevertheless, if Olen was uncomfortable, she should have said the first time: "Your personal life is your own, and I find your writing entertaining. Besides, I know, because of your excellent references and demonstrated work ethic, that you'd never be hung over on the job or IM with your boyfriend while you're watching my kids. But could you do me a favor and not post anything about your work for me or about our family? Thanks, kid! You've been a great nanny and someday you'll be a swell academic." Simple, right? In any case, I think there's another, so far unreported, story here. There's nothing more galling than someone not reading your blog once you've given them the address; my own theory is that the nanny was so irked by her boss' lack of interest in her creative life that she loaded the blog with stuff she knew would get Olen's goat. It would be on the nutty side, yes, but as we know, there's no shortage of nuts in this story's Cracker Jack box.

Categories: NYT