Never apologize, never explain

Update:  The post is up.

The Nance and Lance show will be playing today at the American Street, but it's an evening performance.

Hey, I'm on vacation here!

We're discussing nannies, not because either one of us is having problems with our kids' nanny, it's an issue we both know only second-hand, but because Helaine Olen wrote a column for the New York Times the other day explaining why she fired her children's nanny.

Never apologize, never explain.  Olen's ex-nanny had blog.  Olen read the blog.  Olen did not like what she read on the blog.  She and her husband fired the nanny because of the blog.   Their right, and their call.  But Olen, who didn't like it that the nanny was exposing the Olens' personal lives on the web, thought it was fine for her to expose the nanny's personal life in the New York Times.  This in itself was the act of a bully.  But it was also the act of a person with very little self-awareness, because the portrait she paints of herself is far worse than the sketch the nanny drew on her blog.

Plus, the nanny responded on her blog, and the nanny is a better writer.

Amanda Marcotte and Dr B both have interesting posts on the story.

Amanda's take is that Olen, in trying to defend hersef against the idea she might have fired the nanny not because of the blog but because the blog revealed that the nanny was having the sort of happy and sexually active single life that middle-aged moms have no time for and Olen was jealous, Olen actually reveals herself to be even more jealous than she denies having been.

Dr B thinks that Olen was actually hurt and offended that the nanny didn't write more about the Olens.   What bothered Olen more than anything, says Dr B, was discovering that the nanny was a person in her own right and as a person with thoughts and feelings and concerns of her own, she didn't have much interest in the Olens when she was off-duty.

My feeling is that both Amanda and Dr B could be right, one or the other could be right, and both could be wrong.   Neither Olen nor the nanny can be known as real human beings from the column or the blog.   They are characters in each other's stories.  What I do think is that both stories have something to say about the problematic nature of the nanny-parent relationship.

I'm waiting for Nance's response, but based on our phone conversation this morning, I predict that she doesn't have much sympathy with either Olen or the nanny.

Tune in tonight at the Street.

Comments

[Pepper]

Yeah, after reading that, Olen is guilty of staring into her own navel and falling into the black hole. Nevermind that there was a person right there who needed a salary and who - judging from what I read on her blog and Olen's story - did everything she was supposed to do as a nanny.

And the nanny let Olen read the blog. What did Olen expect? (I'm not sure letting her boss read the blog was the best idea, though.)

Americans are so weird about their servants. I even feel weird using the word "servant." Perhaps if Olen saw the nanny in a more British light, the whole problem wouldn't have happened in the first place.

[blue girl]

Pepper, I think you nailed it:

"I'm not sure letting her boss read the blog was the best idea, though."

Whenever you find out someone's talking behind your back -- let alone to the entire world -- and you've given them the *password* to listen in --
especially if that someone's got the power to get a 1/2 page essay in the Sunday NYTs -- well, it's a hard lesson to learn. Really hard.

And Olen had to have shown her vindictiveness in the boss/employee relationship anyway, don't you think? Just in their everyday dealings?

Didn't Tessy (?) observe any of her characteristics? I think she got too comfortable on her site.

Who knows? Maybe Tessy will get a book deal out of it --
you know that *traditional* media is still trying to figure out how bloggers fit into the bigger picture.

I think this whole story today proves that all of life is just like 8th grade.

So sad.

[Lance]

Pepper,

You're right about Americans and servants---although people who work in service industries meet too many Americans who are way too comfortable with having other people at their beck and call.

But I wonder if Americans who hire nannies do see them in a British light---they see them and they think Mary Poppins and judge their own nannies accordingly.

[Pepper]

Good point! Although the whole idea of Mary gettin' down with the chimneysweeps is too much fun ... and there's that show 'Nanny 911!' What do you bet those ladies sneak a tipple every now and then?

bluegirl, I smell a book deal, too.

[Scott Lemieux]

You're much more fair-minded than I, but I found Olen's article just atrocious. It's bad enough to fire your nanny because of your prissy hangups, but even worse to discuss it in transparent bad faith.

[Markg]

you're right. the nanny is a far better writer.

[Chana M]

The nanny is probably a better person, and she certainly has a good case to make for herself, but I don't think she's a better writer. She might also find that graduate faculty in English will expect her to use apostrophes, and to avoid randomly capitalizing words.

[Anne Laurie]

One of my favorite quotes, from Joan Didion: "This is the first thing to remember: Writers are always selling someone out."

Olen's snitty little piece is vulgar & frankly atrocious, but it's only a variation of a theme I've run across too often recently, the Middle-Class-Middle-Aged-Literary-Person-with-the-Why-Don't-the-World-Revolve-Around-ME-Anymore-Blues. (Salon.com has not only posted a bunch of these whiney screeds -- not all by women; Neal Pollack had one that actually raised my blood pressure -- it's actually given a column to a particularly egregious offender.) Olen's nanny does seem to be a better writer, although for a graduate student in English she doesn't seem to have a really strong grasp of basic grammar. (If I weren't so lazy, I'd go look up Jane Austen's nasty quip in PRIDE & PREJUDICE about the relative gifts of male & female letter-writers.) An experienced employee wouldn't have given her URL to an employer, especially one she had reason not to trust. A halfway intelligent employer wouldn't have read the employee's blog, because if you're experienced enough to be writing about your personal life for the New York Times you should have a better grasp of the distinction between "employee" and "friend". Because Olen is older, and therefore should have been more self-aware, she comes off worst in this encounter. But I doubt either individual will ever view this as a high point in their separate careers.

One of the disadvantages of blogging is that everyone now has the chance to make an idiot of themselves in a very, VERY public forum. Back in the dark ages, when people still communicated on paper, I was given the opportunity to make an idiot of myself in print in a much more limited circle. The repercussions of those early epistolary battles convinced me that I should never write anything down that I wouldn't be willing to defend to my worst enemy -- or any future partner, employer, or public prosecutor. This is the second biggest reason why I am a commenter instead of a blogger in my own right (the biggest being that I am lazy, and getting lazier as I get older).