Blogging in Styles

Two stories in the Style section send the same message: blog and beware. If you blog about being sent away to a camp to make you straight, then you'll start a movement and a backlash. If you blog about not liking your job, after telling your boss to go look at your blog, then you'll get fired.

The nanny who told her employers about her blog and then wrote on it about how much she didn't like the job and how babysitting made her wish to be sterilized is either a new level of idiot or a self-promoting genius. Perhaps she knew she was working for a successful writer, and hoped to get herself discovered. Now we can all sit back and wait for the inevitable book version. "The Kinky Nanny," or, "The Nanny Goes Both Ways." Eh.

As for the kid whose parents want him to become straight, it sounds like the parents had lost before they'd even begun. His blog--and the fallout--just confirm things. The University of Chicago hosted a self-described ex-gay a few years ago, and my account of his visit is here.