Is it just me or is there something grotesque about the idea of "designer nannies," as suggested by this story in the German magazine, Spiegel, (hat tip: China Digital Times):  Chinese Nannies are the Latest New York Trend .   Here are some excerpts:

…many
Americans believe China will overtake the US both economically and
politically by 2040, at the latest. So they’re looking out for the next
generation. At the very least it can’t hurt if your child can hold her
own linguistically with the mightiest world leaders of the future.

For
this reason the "Chinese nanny" is now chic in New York’s wealthier
circles — to the extreme annoyance of French governesses, who are
finding it hard to defend their traditional dominance over Manhattan’s
nurseries against competition from the Far East.   

 And, you know, not just any Chinese woman will do:

It
took six months for Jim Rogers and Paige Parker to find a nanny. For
a while only unqualified candidates from New York’s Chinatown answered
their ads in Chinese-American newspapers. "Most of them come from the
countryside and speak Cantonese," says Rogers. "We didn’t want that."
Hilton Augusta will one day have to communicate with the business elite
of Shanghai, and they speak Mandarin.

Her parents brought
Chinese friends to the au pair interviews to serve as a kind of
language police. The idea was to keep Miss Rogers from learning the
wrong sort of Chinese, and finding herself speaking undesirable slang
later on.

    So, Chinese nannies are now seen as tools to advance the interests of the richest people in the US.  What will be next: Confucian academies for up and coming Upper East Siders?

    What will Laura say?