Celebrity: Not for the Faint of Heart

From the New York Times: Tiger Woods and the Perils of Modern Celebrity.

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,

, 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

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

.