I "Love" New York

The New York Times calls The Nanny Diaries "Diabolically funny."

This makes me think that either
1-The New York Times book reviewer partakes of crack cocaine, or,
2-They only read the first chapter.

Yes, this book has some hysterically funny lines:

• Speaking of the nanny interview: No other event epitomized the job as perfectly, and it always began and ended in an elevator nicer than most New Yorkers' apartments.
• After listing a child's endless food restrictions: This is Phase I of bringing me in the fold, of creating the illusion of collusion: "We're in this together! Little Elspeth is our joint project! And we're going to feed her nothing but mung beans!"

Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Kraus just get better. I'd include more quotes, but it's the kind of book that takes a short essay to explain why you just snorted milk through your nose.

But then, you see, there's the plot.

The quick and stupid way to describe it is The Devil Wears Prada, with the increasingly psychotic boss woman, meets Sex in the City, where every woman is desperately trying to hook "Mr.Big," only to have him wriggle away for the next younger, thinner, sexier version.

Except, here, there's this heartbreakingly real four-year-old boy getting crushed by his parents' blindness to anything but power and status. All he wants for Christmas is a tree to decorate for Christmas and a Dad to hang the ornaments on the top branches. But his mom hired a professional ornament hanger and his daddy is . . . somewhere . . .working . . . .

His part-time nanny does her best to help him fulfill his needs, while the pit at the bottom of your stomach tells you it's not going to get any better. At the beginning of the novel, Nannie's mom tells her, ". . . I don't want you graduating on Valium because some woman with more money than she knows what to do with left you her kid while she ran off to Cannes." By the end, you believe that would have been the best case scenario.

Ha! I'm sooo smart.

Slate magazine has a reader discussion forum called "The Fray." One cool feature of The Fray is that Slate editors select certain comments as "Fray editor's picks." Thus, you can select to view only Fray editor's picks and see those comments that are on-topic, insightful and original.

One of my comments was FINALLY picked by the Fray editors.

Here's the article:

http://www.slate.com/id/2161163/fr/flyout

and here's my response:

Is Dove feminist?
I don't think that woman are purchasing Dove products because they think that Dove is a feminist organization. I think that they are purchasing the products because Dove's marketing message has a powerful emotional appeal to many women. The marketing allows women to express their personal values.

In the same way, people don't buy Hallmark cards because the company "cares enough to send the very best." As a matter of fact, mailing a mass-produced card with a standard sentiment is a poor expression of personal feeling. In spite of this, Hallmark has succesfully marketed their cards as the highest quality demonstration of love and caring. People respond to this marketing message as a way of fulfilling their emotional, cultural and social needs, not because the company intrinsically possesses those values.