Wright's account of the affair begins when Law whines to her about his beloved Miller's commitment to work and social life. Wright wrote, "I said to Jude I didn't understand why he didn't find a wife who didn't want a career and to party all the time ... He said ... he would love that more than anything." A seriously pissed friend of Miller's has confirmed this angle of the story, claiming that Law explained his straying to his fiancée by saying, "I told you I needed you to be there for me."

It's a charming rehash of this year's Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston boy-meets-girl fable in which girl selfishly insists on carrying on with her own career and refusing to tend to boy's every need. What's boy to do but diddle the babysitter on a pool table?

It's also the oldest story in the book, an embarrassing cliché: the needy male taking comfort in the unthreatening (and often younger, though not in this case, since if Law went younger than 23-year-old Miller he'd be on a perilous legal ledge) woman whose sole professional function is to do the domestic work of child care. Babysitters are, after all, women who are paid not to go to offices, or movie sets, or anywhere else that might smack of competition or abandonment. Their job is to stay safely at home. Foxy, right?

Right, according to the New York Post, which on Wednesday ran a story tastefully headlined "Come to Papa," asserting that "many New York wives don't understand why anyone would invite a Daisy Wright into the house; they want someone older, and preferably homely." The scare tactics of the story -- Beware the hot nanny and her vagina dentata! -- was so ludicrous that Gawker ran an item lampooning it: "Any nanny who's even slightly attractive is clearly a husband-fucking varmint ... Besides, everyone knows that the best domestic servants are the ugly ones. It's God's way."

But hot-nanny Wright didn't stay hot for long, and on Thursday, the Post ran a cover shot of Wright with the blaring headline: "Hey Jude, what were you thinking? Nanny ain't no movie star." The thesis of this delicate piece of prose was in its second paragraph, when reporter Bill Hoffman wrote: "Even all tarted up for a photo shoot for London's Mirror newspaper, nanny Daisy Wright looks more like a late-night belt-notch than a top-shelf taste worth scrapping an engagement to a gorgeous A-list actress" for.

Classy.

For the many working women who can't afford child care, there are costs much steeper than the pestilential plague of nannies. But the double frenzy of the past week reminds us that we're not yet beyond punishing women who choose not to stay home, and who are lucky enough to be able to hire someone else to fill in their blanks. We cannot let them carry on the balancing act of career, family and love life without menacingly suggesting that their help might just fill in their blanks too well.

And those who take on the job of caring for other women's children -- for financial reasons, or because it is their calling -- face a double bind. Be good, but don't be too good. Be smart, but don't be too smart. Take care of needs, but not too many needs.

After all, it remains vital that we be able to marginalize and look down on the people who raise our kids -- mothers and nannies both. What would happen if we ever started looking up to them?

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

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