Sex And Stuff
As you may have heard, amid the din of wailing and despair about the “death of newspapers” and the crisis of print journalism, the Hartford Business Journal is doing just fine.
Whatever fears there might have been that HBJ would be dragged down to the level of other lesser publications were banished with the appointment of the Artful Strategist, Cohen the Columnist — known in these circles as the Golden Age of Business Journalism.
Whenever there is the slightest slip in readership, the shadowy Cayman Islands holding company that owns the newspaper calls Cohen and implores him to work his magic, yet again. Cohen knows the secret. He knows what you really want.
You want your brains cleansed of actuarial tables; you want your consciousness freed from worry about tax codes and depreciation. You want relief from promises that Hartford’s Front Street development project will be just fine, once the tattoo parlor has signed its lease and turned on its neon sign.
No, no, what you yearn for is compelling journalism about relationships, about person-to-person dynamics. You want the kind of stuff that Human Resources occasionally offers up in workshops, but you actually want to stay awake long enough to get to the point. You want columns about sex and stuff.
It was comedian Jackie Mason who explained the dilemma: “I always thought music was more important than sex — then I thought, if I don’t hear a concert for a year and a half, it doesn’t bother me.”
It’s not easy, balancing work and real life — which is not to say that work isn’t real, except for the corporate annual report, which is a piece of fiction worthy of a Pulitzer or a Sarbanes-Oxley investigation. Life is especially hard for you young professionals, who were tricked into attending a Hartford chamber-of-commerce-type party, got liquored up, and became convinced that Hartford would be a really cool place to live and work and have sex.
Which reminds me: If your boss wants to transfer you to Texas, don’t worry. A federal appeals court just overturned the Texas ban on sex toys. Texas was one of only two states to ban sex toys.
No, Connecticut does not ban such stuff. Connecticut prohibits the sale of wine in grocery sores, which may actually be more of an obstacle to romance than, well … a ban on sex toys.
More to the point, how do you get your boss to pay attention to you, to look you over, to consider you for that transfer to the libertine state of Texas? Well, be careful what you wish for. Florida State University researchers, in the current issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, report that jealous men and women spend a great deal of time staring at potential competitors. Of course, this “attentional adhesion” may also be courting and flirting and stuff, but chances are, your boss is worried you may be working overtime on a hostile takeover, if you get the drift.
Which, of course, leads to the matter of looks versus money — a core concern of every social relationship in a business environment. The popular wisdom is that women are on the prowl for money, while the guys would propose to the file clerk, if her chest were big enough.
But a new study released by Northwestern University suggests that both men and women value money a bit more than looks, which is bad news for the likes of Cohen the Columnist (just look at that picture of me), but good news for most of you ugly corporate guys, with your stock options and 401(k)s and newspaper subscriptions.
You’re now well equipped to navigate the jealous, money-crazed, sex-toy infested corporate world, secure in the understanding that you can and must have a social life, as well. Take the Cohen column to bed with you. It’s o.k. Even in Texas.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
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