When I first saw this Newsday story, I thought, Oh no, here they come, the evil-mom-with-a-nanny stories. The Nanny Diaries movie is coming out. The book was your usual summer beach read--kind of silly and dreadfully written. But the movie is likely to be more interesting, given that it is being directed by the couple who made that wonderfully quirky Harvey Pekar film. (Anybody remember the name? I'm feeling too lazy to google it.)

But, reporters who use movies as a peg for trend stories--and yup, I include myself in that lowly bunch--were bound to pounce on the simplest, easiest question: Are mommies who hire nannies really that awful?

Well, Newsday interviewed some nanny agency heads that, lo and behold, found that yes, nannies are mistreated by these spoiled, entitled women of leisure who hire strangers to take care of their babies. The writer slips in the cover-your-ass caveats, like: there aren't too many of those super-rich Upper East Side ladies living on Long Island" (pronounced Lawn Guy-land). Most of the Islanders who hire nannies are working and feeling worried about losing their nannies. But then the writer devotes most of the stories to recounting red herring anecdotes (the woman who fired her nanny because of the way she folded the towels, yeah, sure I believe that one). It's only three quarters of the way down the story does the reporter say, well, guess what, there are some bad nannies too.

What makes this all so annoying is that these kinds of stories will inevitably feed the anti-working mom backlash. Look at those spoiled ladies hiring nannies. Look at how they mistreat them! And ignore their babies!

Excuse me now, it's time for my nanny to go home. Stumble It!