Hey, Tiger, Lack of Privacy Is Part of the Deal

The spectacle of near-celebrities going on Larry King Live to ask for the return of their privacy has been one of the long-running jokes of our era. Now Tiger Woods puts a new spin on it with his profound-apology-but-give-me-my privacy press release.

Memo to Tiger: if you really wanted your privacy, maybe you should just have played championship golf, lived on the prize money, and gone home. Maybe you shouldn't have inked dozens of deals with sponsors who were using your name and image to create a bond with potential consumers, a bond that's implicitly aspirational. The grandaddy of such advertising in the modern age, of course, is three simple words: "Be Like Mike". Once you're asking people to be like you, you're inviting them to wonder about the "you" they're supposed to want to be like. End of privacy. In case your agents, lawyers, managers, and other handlers didn't mention it, that's the deal.