Tiger Woods and the Perils of Modern Celebrity The time has come, perhaps, to retire - or at least rethink - the adage "there is no such thing as bad publicity." True, there will always be people who seek attention of any kind, like Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents of the "balloon boy" who captured headlines in October, or Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who brazened their way into President Obama's first state dinner, in November. But for those whose prominence is rooted in the older tradition of justly earned renown - the truly gifted, the authentically accomplished - publicity is as likely to diminish as exalt. Exhibit A is, of course, Tiger Woods, whose prowess on the golf course has lately been overshadowed, first by a rash of tabloid reports of infidelities and then by his announcement on Friday that he will "take an indefinite break from professional golf" and "focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person." It is fitting that the hidden costs of fame should be exacted from Mr. Woods almost precisely 50 years after the publication of a book, "Celebrity Register," that presented a new picture of social standing in modern America, one in which talent and achievement had been subordinated to publicity. In order to record this transformation, the project's editor-in-chief, Cleveland Amory, put a team of 20 researchers and writers to work, and four years later they fashioned a colossal volume; its 864 oversize pages were divided into two columns of names, each with a photo and a mailing address (usually a home address) - 2,240 celebrities in all, beginning with the baseball slugger Hank Aaron and ending with the ballet dancer Vera Zorina. "The word "Celebrity," in our present "Celebrity Society" covers a multitude of sins," Mr. Amory wrote in a prefatory note. It does not mean, for example, accomplishment in the sense of true or lasting worth - rather it often means simply accomplishment in the sense of popular, or highly publicized, temporary success. Thus, Mortimer Adler, the Great Books impresario, shared a page with Polly Adler, the Prohibition era's most prominent madam. The entry on Senator John W. Bricker, an ultra-conservative Republican, faced a column on Harry Bridges, the left-wing San Francisco union organizer. Two short paragraphs on the TV comedian Dagmar preceded three scarcely longer ones on the Dalai Lama. Niels Bohr made it in, but so did the Gabor sisters (and their mother). For some, including Mr. Amory himself, the "Celebrity Register" recorded a steep decline in American values. The book bristled with sharp, and sometimes snobbish, judgments. Saul Bellow's novel "The Adventures of Augie March" established him "as among the least likely to perish of the younger American novelists," while Grace Metalious's colossal best seller "Peyton Place" was a work of "dim literary merit." But the book's message could also be interpreted differently - as evidence of the increasingly democratic nature of American life. What celebrity had replaced was the world not of individual achievement but of inherited social position. Indeed, to skim the book today is to be struck by how many of the names in it retain what Mr. Amory called "the decibel ring" of celebrity. Either way, "Celebrity Register" had uncovered a cold truth about the American idea of success, which left even those at the pinnacle of society vulnerable to shifting public appetites. It "is one of the most symbolic documents of our age," the historian Daniel Boorstin wrote of Mr. Amory's book. "It is an index to the new categories of American society" - the categories, he meant, that were formed by the media, which had degraded the hero into the mere celebrity. "The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark," Mr. Boorstin observed. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name. Update a few words, and the formula applies equally in 2009, although the terms are even starker. The "image or trademark" of 1961 has become the "brand" of today, with many millions of dollars at stake in sponsorships and endorsements. More than ever before the celebrity, in particular the sports celebrity, is trapped in a transactional relationship with his fans, who regard him less as a person than as a commodity - an enormously skilled competitor on the field, but off it just another pitchman selling himself on television and in backlit displays in airport terminals. It is in part this disconnect between Mr. Woods and his public that makes him seem so isolated just now, as he remains in seclusion. His aloofness recalls that of Michael Jordan, another singular African-American athlete with prodigious "crossover appeal." In the 1980s and 90s Mr. Jordan helped make a sport dominated by black athletes accessible to white audiences. On the court, and in edgy Nike ads filmed by Spike Lee, Mr. Jordan exuded competitive gusto, but when not in uniform he maintained a guarded and distant neutrality. When some urged him to use his considerable prestige in his home state, North Carolina, to support Harvey Gantt, an African-American who challenged the archconservative Jesse Helms for a Senate seat in 1990, Mr. Jordan declined. Mr. Woods's balancing act has been, if anything, even more delicate. A genuine prodigy, he revolutionized the most conservative of sports with his titanic power and superbly honed skills. At the same time he has broadened its audience. A self-described "Cablinasian" - at once exotic and all-American, ethnically apart but unthreatening - he helped dispel golf's lingering aura, or taint, of whites-only, country-club privilege at a time when the public watchwords were diversity and multiculturalism. Like Mr. Jordan, he became bigger than his sport and at the same time was its leading global ambassador. And in his case, as in Mr. Jordan's, the performance has been financially rewarding on a giant scale. But it also required almost fanatical self-control. Though he has been a public figure for most of his life, Mr. Woods himself remains unknown, perhaps unknowable, through what seems to have been a conscious effort to efface his own personality. It now looks as though he found other outlets, as a sequence of women have come forward, some of them eager, it appears, to claim their own moment of fame, which is also part of the deal in the transactional world of the brand-name celebrity. "The very agency which first makes the celebrity in the long run inevitably destroys him," Mr. Boorstin wrote in 1961. He will be destroyed, as he was made, by publicity. The newspapers make him, and they unmake him. For now it's unclear how much damage Mr. Woods has sustained, and whether he can overcome it. It may be that forgiveness lies only a championship away. But it may also be that his stature has been permanently diminished. In any event, it is clear that his ambition was not to take up space in tabloids but to be ignored by them - for celebrity, the dream of so many others, has been his nemesis from the beginning. Correction: December 20, 2009 An article last Sunday about the rise of celebrity in the United States misspelled the given name of a physicist listed in the reference book "Celebrity Register." He is Niels Bohr, not Neils. The article also misspelled a term that Tiger Woods has used to describe his mixed ethnicity. It is Cablinasian, not Calibasian. Some online dictionaries define Cablinasian as a portmanteau word blending Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian.