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Tangle of Toy ([info]funkyhelix) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2005-07-18 12:12:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
work + blogging = never a good combination

Has no one learned from the tale of Heather B. and how she got 'dooced?'

A NYC nanny was fired over her blog. The twist? She was employed by Helaine Olen, an NY Times style-section writer, who then turned around to write an inflammatory article called The New Nanny Diaries Are Online [mefi1/mefi1] which started out with:

"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.

How do I know these things? I read her blog."

Of course, the nanny then fires back, where else? Her blog.

Wtf moment? The nanny not only told her employer she was keeping a blog, she gave the woman the url to go visit it.


(Post a new comment)


[info]ladybirdsleeps
2005-07-18 05:25 pm UTC (link)
There's some good commentary on Bitch, Ph.D - the nanny shows up to explain why she gave her the URL (and admits it was a terrible mistake).

I'm just boggled by the asshattery of Olen.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]mistressrenet
2005-07-18 08:59 pm UTC (link)
I don't know, there's enough stupid here to go around. That's why I just started a LJ specifially to give out to friends, family and employers who don't know about my dirty, dirty porn habit.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]ladybirdsleeps
2005-07-18 10:15 pm UTC (link)
Giving her employer her blog's URL was stupid. But what Olen did with the information in the blog trascends stupid. It was dishonest, malicious, and petty - in addition to being stupid.

I've got sympathy for the nanny because everyone does really stupid things sometimes.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]mistressrenet
2005-07-19 03:26 am UTC (link)
Oh, I do sympathize with her to a point. I would never mention anything, positive or negative, about my employer that could be traced back to a blog that I knew my employer knew about though. Because it's really easy to drive yourself crazy going 'is that what she REALLY thinks about me?'

...which in no way excuses the crazy batshit of the NY Times article.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


(Anonymous)
2005-07-18 05:28 pm UTC (link)
What's interesting is that this is the SECOND such online backlash to a NYT "Modern Love" column in two weeks -- there was one a week or two ago with a guy discussing the pet name he and his beloved had for each other ("Froky", I think), and how hard it was to break up with her when the magic pet name kept him feeling all schmoopie towards her.

His ex was very, very put out by the way she was depicted in the article and wrote about it in her blog (I will try to find a link).


I'm wondering if the NYT may come to the conclusion that the whole thing is just too damn much trouble.
-- Queencallipygos on LJ

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]prettypinkkitty
2005-07-19 04:38 pm UTC (link)
The Modern Love column is here, and the girlfriend's response is here. I sort of feel worse for the nanny than for the girlfriend though, even though the boyfriend is a tool who'll never get a date again. Still...nanny's employer is BATSHIT.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]ingrid
2005-07-18 05:35 pm UTC (link)
Wow, jealousy, sensationalism, obsession *and* she got paid for it.

Hope Olen hands over a healthy part of the paycheck this article fell under.

Facinating.

(Reply to this)


[info]pyratejenni
2005-07-18 05:45 pm UTC (link)
A fine example of why it's good to keep your employer out of your personal life as much as possible.

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[info]megmurry
2005-07-18 07:16 pm UTC (link)
Yep.

And one of the things I like about LJ is how simply I can lock my work rants.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]runrunmarch
2005-07-20 10:11 pm UTC (link)
Agreed *blink* If I ever had anything remotely negative to say about my workplace, it was locked to people who I knew wouldn't be bastards and call my supervisor.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]megmurry
2005-07-18 05:53 pm UTC (link)
Anyone who touches themselves while reading the New Yorker is A-OK in my book.

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[info]phosfate
2005-07-18 08:27 pm UTC (link)
Those cartoons with e-mailing dogs always get me kinda bothered.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]rinoared
2005-07-18 06:33 pm UTC (link)
This case has WTF all over it, and the wank is so aplenty.

Oh, and what's so bad about having illicit spanking thoughts on Tucker? Mmm, bowtie strangling.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]pepperlandgirl4
2005-07-18 06:36 pm UTC (link)
I think it showed up on atrios (and somebody mentioned on the DailyKos, but I don't have a link) because there's some bad blood right now between bloggers and "real" journalists.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]jedilora
2005-07-19 05:14 am UTC (link)
Damn you Ted Hitler!

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[info]pepperlandgirl4
2005-07-19 07:58 am UTC (link)
*snort*

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[info]katemonkey
2005-07-18 07:54 pm UTC (link)
Okay, dude, I knew Helaine like ten years ago. My high school had this mentoring program, and they set me up with her to be my mentor.



This entire thing is fucking my shit up.

(Reply to this)


ealusaid
2005-07-18 08:46 pm UTC (link)
I think that PNH's rundown of it has a lot of really good links. I, too, read her at the comment thread of Bitch Ph.D., where she admits that in hindsight it was stupid, but as her employers were both professional writers, she thought they might be interested in something she had written.

I was considering posting this to alleviate the mind-numbing HBP wank, but I think the only one being a true asshat in this encounter is Olen.

(Reply to this)


[info]mistressrenet
2005-07-18 09:31 pm UTC (link)
It almost seemed that as she created the persona of a do-me feminist with an academic bent, it began to affect her performance. The woman who was loving if a bit strict toward the children became in our view short and impatient, slamming doors and bashing pans when my toddler wouldn't sleep and sighing heavily if asked to run an errand.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with your admitted jealousy and issues with her sexuality, nope, nope.

Please stop making working mothers look bad, kthks.

(Reply to this)


[info]erototoxin
2005-07-18 10:53 pm UTC (link)
"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.


Hey, I'd be actively seeking out a nanny like that!

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]issendai
2005-07-19 01:35 am UTC (link)
*I* wouldn't be. A 26-year-old woman, touching herself, having erotic fantasies, and being mildly kinky in bed? Having LESBIAN AFFAIRS? Would you trust such a woman?

I couldn't.

Because if that's the kinkiest the nanny got, she'd never be able to handle my doujinshi collection or my friends' penchants for greeting one another by chirping, "Buttplug!", never mind the creep who keeps asking people to "join his playgroup."

Seriously, what does the Mommy From Hell expect of a twentysomething? Does she think that female sexuality is something you switch on after marriage, when you're ready to have a kid and it's two days before your ovulation? Has she forgotten what her own twenties were like?

And if we email her and tell her that four out of five of the twentysomething women she passes every day could probably beat her nanny for kink, would she do us all a favor and keel over twitching?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]issendai
2005-07-19 01:50 am UTC (link)
*Actually, you know, READS the article*

Hokay... I take back some of the ranting. The employer wasn't quite as sexaphobic as she initially sounded. She was, however, sex-obsessed, riddled with issues, and painfully ignorant of the conventions of blogging. She had repellent ideas about the place of a nanny in her household (if being your nanny isn't work, lady, why do you think women want money to do it?). And my personal favorite part, from where she and her husband fire the nanny:

My husband didn't bring up the blog with her and instead cited other factors for her dismissal. He did not, he told me, care to find himself a character online.

...Whereupon she runs out and makes the nanny into a character in her own story, with exponentially more readers.

At least, her essay began by having more readers. The nanny's blog, that embarrassing account of an unnamed employer's life, now has a vast readership that knows exactly who the nanny is talking about. Well done! Next time, Olen, maybe you should pin the target to something other than your own shoe.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


(Anonymous)
2005-07-19 12:02 am UTC (link)
Is finding Tucker Carlson hot considered abberant now? Do I have to turn in my Dirty Liberal Card?

-sabinelagrande

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(Anonymous)
2005-07-23 08:56 pm UTC (link)
He's just one of those guys who seems like he could use a hard, thorough pegging.

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[info]gorogoro
2005-07-19 01:15 am UTC (link)
Biting lovers? Sleeping pills? Touching boobies?

Come on, if she's going to try to make her out to be some horrible twisted person, I better be hearing stories about "That one time, in the BDSM swingers' club, with the giraffe..." Boob-touching is lame.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]pepperlandgirl4
2005-07-19 01:55 am UTC (link)
Hey! Have you been reading my blog?
*eyes you supiciously*

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]gorogoro
2005-07-19 04:30 am UTC (link)
No, but I am now!

I mean, uhh....

(Reply to this)(Parent)

  
   
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