10. "Glamour Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate 'Don't'" 8/14/07
Jezebel's expose on a racist "fashion dos and don'ts" presentation by Glamour magazine helped, in a roundabout way, bring down an editor whom the blogger actually liked. The sequence of events here is fascinating, as the editor's identity is revealed and Jezebel goes from indignation to conflicted guilt when the fashionista is publicly humiliated and fired from her job.
9. "Sinbad Unloads on Hillary Clinton" 3/11/08
During her campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton said that in 1996 she had landed in Bosnia under sniper fire, a claim that caused many people to scratch their heads and respond, "Um, Hillary? We were alive in 1996, and we don't recall hearing about this in the news." One of the Washington Post's bloggers thought to call up the comedian Sinbad, who was (kind of hilariously) on the same plane. The star of Houseguest quickly exposed the biggest of Clinton's widely publicized "exaggerations."
8. "Asian Girls" 1/20/08
This site's very first post, published on January 18, 2008 (White People Like Coffee!), received nearly a thousand comments — an unheard of volume of feedback for a brand new blog. Since then, Stuff White People Like has proven Onion-y enough to generate a massive dedicated following (41 million hits so far), a book, countless media analyses and just about as much love-hate feedback as any blog could ever wish for.
"The whole thing with comments and email has shown me a really interesting truth about the internet," says editor Christian Lander. "The comments are filled with so much negativity and hate that I stopped reading them, but in all I have received less than fifteen negative emails." Post #11 remains the most controversial to date — a post, Lander emphasizes, that was written by an Asian man.
7. "Trent Lott Endorses Segregation" 12/6/02
If Keith Olbermann had been a big deal at the time of this story, he would've created a special category for The Worst Person In The World Ever (To Open His Stupid Fucking Mouth.) Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott's 2002 endorsement of Strom Thurmond's pro-segregationist platform — and TPM's breaking of the story — helped boost the legitimacy of blogs as news gatherers even as it signaled the decline of Lott's career.
6. "WASHINGTONIENNE SPEAKS!!" 5/21/04
In the spring of 2004, everyone in Washington wanted to know who the Washingtonienne was. For months, the congressional staff assistant had been anonymously blogging about her sexploits with high-level politicians, including a cash-for-sex exchange with one of President Bush's appointees. In this blog post, famed political blogger Wonkette outed the Washingtonienne as Jessica Cutler, assistant to (shocker!) a Republican senator from Ohio. Within weeks of the outing, she was fired, labeled "the D.C. Slut" by the media and interviewed by Playboy. And, of course, she sold her book for a reported $300,000.
5. "Senator Larry Craig...What's with the gay bashing?" 10/17/06
Many a recent national news story was broken on a blog. Few of them, however, were the result of years of research and reporting by unknown amateur bloggers. In this BlogActive post, Michael Rogers was quietly ahead of the Larry Craig scandal by a full ten months, revealing in October 2006 that Craig was having sex with men in Idaho and Washington even as he pushed an anti-gay agenda in Congress.
4. "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" 9/10/07
This is technically a "vlog" post, but how could we resist including the second-most-commented-on video in YouTube history. To date, Chris Crocker's hysterical cry for Britney mercy has been viewed over 22 million times. Much of the feedback has been virulently homophobic, and Crocker reportedly received death threats. You've got to hand it to him, though: in an age where everyone wants to be famous, he triumphed. Number of comments: 327,000 and counting.
3. "Bush Guard Documents: Forged" 9/9/04
Sure, this post helped give us four more years of George W. Bush, but can you blame the blogger? As he points out here, CBS fell for an obvious trap — an attempt by the right-wing to change the topic from Bush's actual military service to a debate about the alleged lies of the "liberal media." Dan Rather went down in flames for somebody else's mistake, and Kerry, who could've challenged Bush far more forcefully to clear up the mess, went on to lose the election. Thanks, Little Green Footballs.
2. "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!" 9/24/06
In this case, the blog itself became a mini-scandal even while exposing the biggest political scandal of 2006. Here's what happened: An anonymous blogger set up a rudimentary Blogspot account called "Stop Sex Predators" in July of that year. According to Radar magazine, the blogger posted a few token entries plagiarized from other websites. Then, less than two months after the blog was launched, it dropped the bombshell about the frisky Mark Foley intern emails. The emails hit the news cycle instantly, Foley went down, and Radar and the New York Times revealed the blogger's identity: Lane Hudson, a former staffer for a Democratic senator from South Carolina. Hudson was basically forgotten as the Foley fallout overtook the national conversation, but it goes to show how the ascendancy of blogs has made news dissemination a slipperier game that doesn't always include bylines.
1. "Crack is Whack" 10/28/07
We were conflicted about putting this in the #1 slot. Amidst all the other scandals, the toppled political figures and Glamour editors, wars, world leaders, Sinbad — how can one D.C. dweller's personal blog post about illicit backyard goings-on be more important? Who the hell do we think we are?
Knee Deep in Mud didn't dig up any scandalous emails to underage pages. No one was fired, hired, or shot at, and nothing contained within this post will change the course of history. Regardless, it's an incredible snapshot of a small event that says big things about urban life in America. While all this other grand history was being made just a few blocks away, this was happening in a back alley of our nation's capital.
10. "Glamour Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate 'Don't'" 8/14/07
9. "Sinbad Unloads on Hillary Clinton" 3/11/08
8. "Asian Girls" 1/20/08
7. "Trent Lott Endorses Segregation" 12/6/02
6. "WASHINGTONIENNE SPEAKS!!" 5/21/04
5. "Senator Larry Craig...What's with the gay bashing?" 10/17/06
4. "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" 9/10/07
3. "Bush Guard Documents: Forged" 9/9/04
2. "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!" 9/24/06
