The Gray Lady blushes
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I was amused this morning by the headline on William D. Cohan's opinion piece in the New York Times about Goldman Sachs' investment in Facebook: "Friends With Benefits". Standard dictionaries haven't picked up on this phrase yet, but Wikipedia tells us that it means "non-exclusive recurring sexual (or near-sexual) relationships", and offers links to a telenovela, a sitcom soundtrack CD, an independent film, an upcoming TV series, and a big-time Hollywood movie due out this summer. The Urban Dictionary, though not always reliable, nails it this time: "Two friends who have a sexual realtionship without being emotionally involved. Typically two good friends who have casual sex without a monogomous relationship or any kind of commitment." (Well, "realtionship" is slightly under-proofread, but you can't have everything.)
It was a disappointment to find that Cohan didn't do anything further with this metaphor in the body of the article. I thought about blogging the headline, but decided not to.
This evening, I was even more amused to see that the headline on Cohan's article had been changed to "Goldman's mutual friend". Of course, it's not the new headline that tickled me, but the fact that the old one was changed.
As of 6:00 or so, the Times' index pages still show the original headline, though the links go to a page with the new one:
Given the fact that headlines are generally written by editors, not by the authors of articles, there are a few possibilities here. Maybe some higher-up decided that the original headline was too undignified for the NYT; or maybe Cohan — or someone at Goldman — objected to the implication that Goldman's customers will be getting screwed "without any kind of commitment".
In fact, on that construal, I might be wrong that the body of the article doesn't echo the headline. There's no explicitly sexual language, but Cohan writes that:
If Goldman does take all these roles at once — investor, salesman, money manager, I.P.O. underwriter — it would certainly raise the ugly specter of conflicts of interest. But probably not to Goldman executives, who have always prided themselves on being able to “manage” through such situations.
rootlesscosmo said,
January 5, 2011 @ 6:43 pm
…in 1980, after [Molly Ivins] wrote about a "community chicken-killing festival" in New Mexico and called it a "gang-pluck," she was recalled to New York as punishment. When Abe Rosenthal, editor of the Times, accused her of trying to inspire readers to think "dirty thoughts" with these words, her response was, "Damn if I could fool you, Mr. Rosenthal."
rootlesscosmo said,
January 5, 2011 @ 6:45 pm
(And I think Cohan may have been thinking of Goldman's multiple roles as a circle of friends with benefits–what Ivins might have called a cluster-pluck.)
Twitter Trackbacks for Language Log » The Gray Lady blushes [upenn.edu] on Topsy.com said,
January 5, 2011 @ 7:14 pm
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jfruh said,
January 5, 2011 @ 7:17 pm
If you subscribe to the NYT's RSS feeds, you can actually watch the headlines evolve as the story is updated throughout the day. It's really quite interesting, though I've never seen one specifically de-sexualized.
Mark P said,
January 5, 2011 @ 7:30 pm
I think that the term is so common that there is no way it was not used intentionally. I'm guessing that the responsible party had a giggle over it.
rkillings said,
January 5, 2011 @ 7:31 pm
My guess is that the NYT editors simply decided not to remind readers of this article, which the newspaper ran in the Magazine in 2004:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/magazine/30NONDATING.html
It is certainly the first thing I was reminded of.
Mr Fnortner said,
January 5, 2011 @ 9:00 pm
Was that jerk chicken?
Erik Zyman Carrasco said,
January 5, 2011 @ 11:24 pm
"(Well, 'realtionship' is slightly under-proofread, but you can't have everything.)"
I mean, while we're at it, that definition also misspells monogamous. Not that I particularly care, haha.
matthew brandi said,
January 6, 2011 @ 5:30 am
"Two friends who have a sexual [relationship] without being emotionally involved."
Really? What kind of a friendship has no emotional involvement? Not "[attachment] to another by feelings of affection or personal regard", clearly.
You may have wanted the punning "nails it", but really it doesn't, unless the notion of friendship has been appallingly thinned.
[(myl) My comment was a lexicographical one, not an ethical or psychological one. And its focus was the discussion of (lack of) commitment. As for the phrase "emotionally involved", I took it as a short-hand reference to the complex of ideas culturally associated with romantic relationships — obviously all human relations, including friendship with or without "benefits", have an emotional component.]
Ginger Yellow said,
January 6, 2011 @ 8:51 am
Yet another counterproductive bowdlerisation, as the new headline doesn't make any sense. A mutual friend is a third party known by two other parties. Who's the third party here? You could make some kind of defence for it in that one of Facebook's more familiar features is "People you may know" (or words to that effect), based on a mutual friends algorithm. But then, given the content of the story, a better headline would have been something like: "You may also know: juicy IPO fees". In the context of the body text, the original headline clearly means that the friendship is the investment and the ancillary business is the "benefits". Which kind of makes the bowdlerisation even worse, as it's not really alluding to sex at all. It's just a play on words using a familiar phrase – more or less a pun.
GeorgeW said,
January 6, 2011 @ 9:43 am
Perhaps, the headline should have read "Benefits with Friends."
The head of one of Goldman's own investment groups passed on the investment. So, it seems that benefits (IPO fees) were more of interest than a deep abiding investment friendship.
Dan Lufkin said,
January 6, 2011 @ 10:46 am
Actually, monogomous is a perfectly valid word: "having a single cargo". Too bad I can't find a single instance of its ever having been used correctly in modern times. Now we have to decide whether it's an eggcorn or a hapax legomenon or something else before we reject it as a typo.
Andrew (not the same one) said,
January 6, 2011 @ 11:37 am
Ginger: The term 'mutual friend' is used on LiveJournal – possibly on other social networking sites as well – to mean 'person who is my friend and of whom I am a friend'. In the (most common) traditional sense of 'friend' this would be superfluous, of course, but not in the social networking sense; and it does actually fit the original sense of 'mutual'.
(The phrase 'mutual friend', with its usual sense, used to be an object of peeving, since 'mutual' is standardly used when A does to B what B does to A, rather than when A and B have something in common. It was of course popularised by the Dickens novel; it can be debated whether the 'error' was Dickens' own, or that of his character, Boffin, who introduces the phrase.)
Ginger Yellow said,
January 6, 2011 @ 1:32 pm
" In the (most common) traditional sense of 'friend' this would be superfluous, of course, but not in the social networking sense;"
It still seems a bit superfluous. I don't know about LiveJournal, but on Facebook friending is automatically mutual in this sense. A "mutual follower" on Twitter would make sense, however.
matthew brandi said,
January 6, 2011 @ 5:43 pm
"obviously all human relations, including friendship with or without "benefits", have an emotional component"
Probably, but they are not all defined by it. The Urban Dictionary was trying to define "friends with benefits" in terms of emotional involvement, if only negatively. I'm not sure the attempt was successful.
Perhaps "friends with benefits" is not so much descriptive as talismanic: "You can't make that claim on me, as this is only friends with benefits." Perhaps …
(As for ethics, I'm making no claim about how people should lead their lives.)
baylink said,
January 6, 2011 @ 11:42 pm
Facebook is purposefully symmetrical in friending; Twitter is purposely asymmetrical.
They fill different needs.
nicholas said,
January 7, 2011 @ 3:41 am
So 'friend with benefits' is an arch euphemism for 'fuck-buddy'?
matthew brandi said,
January 7, 2011 @ 6:30 am
@nicholas: according to the Urban Dictionary definition of "fuck buddy", perhaps:
"All the benefits of being in a relationship minus the bullshit like not doing enough for Valentine's Day or her birthday, not spending 3 months salary on a stupid ring, and not spending enough quality time with her."
But whether that's a good definition of "fuck buddy" seems to be up for grabs:
"a person with whom another person has a relationship based on casual sex only" Collins 2009
"a sexual partner with whom one has no romantic or nonsexual interests." Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions 2007
(Both of those from http://dictionary.reference.com.)
According to those definitions of "fuck buddy" (which fit my understanding), "friends with benefits" is not a euphemism for "fuck buddy", but "friends with benefits" is not a part of my native tongue.
Of course, a cynic might suggest that anyone using "friends with benefits" in anger (as a get-out-of-gaol-free card) might want to get out of the duties of friendship, too, but we're way beyond semantics there, no?