No. 7: Jenny Sanford
Last year Jenny Sanford became an unwilling recruit to the scorned political wives club, whose members include Elizabeth Edwards and Silda Wall Spitzer. If you’re going to be a member, though, you might as well be one of the standouts. The affairs of South Carolina governors don’t usually make international…
No. 6: Rielle Hunter
Rielle Hunter has flitted, like a wild-tressed blonde butterfly, around the edges of fame, or infamy, throughout her life. Born Lisa Jo Druck to a family of race-horse breeders, she was an accomplished equestrian who found herself in the thick of an insurance fraud scandal: Her father was implicated in…
No. 5: Elizabeth Edwards
The CBS legal drama “The Good Wife” might easily have modeled itself on Elizabeth Edwards. In 2010, being the good wife could sometimes count against your approval ratings. Yet Edwards weathered life’s tempests and trials with a resilience forged in the intense heat of public scrutiny, and likely her legacy…
No. 4: Michelle McGee
Who was the woman behind the ink, the other woman who threw the wrench into Bullock’s immensely popular works? Heavily tattooed stripper and fetish model Michelle “Bombshell” McGee‘s origins are murky, though one thing is clear: She had an 11-month affair with James. The bodacious, outrageous McGee couldn’t be further…
No. 3: Sandra Bullock
At the start of 2010, actress Sandra Bullock seemed to have it all. The previous year she had two of her biggest hits, “The Proposal” and “The Blind Side,” and according to Oscar handicappers, the best actress award was hers to lose for the role as Leigh Anne Tuohy, adoptive…
Cheat Sheet
The perennial struggle — the good wife versus the other woman — has had a 21st-century update. Cheat Sheet Elin Nordegren Rachel Uchitel, et al Sandra Bullock Michelle McGee Elizabeth Edwards Rielle Hunter Jenny Sanford Maria Belen Chapur Eva Longoria Erin Barry In days of old (and in plots for…
No. 2: Rachel Uchitel, et al
The dozen-plus women who caused Tiger to roam? They all like to party, some for pay, and they don’t keep quiet. The first to surface, Rachel Uchitel, was a former Bloomberg News TV producer and a VIP lounge hostess at Tao Las Vegas. But she had appeared in public before…
No. 10: Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl”
You submit three manuscripts to a publishing house. Within a matter of months, the first book in your trilogy becomes an international best-seller and makes you the No. 2 author across the globe in 2008. Movie deals are made, not only in your home country of Sweden, but also in…
No. 9: Silly Bandz
A duo of Japanese designers wanted to rescue rubber bands from the trash. An American entrepreneur supersized the product and catered to kids. Now a multimillion-dollar U.S. business, Silly Bandz has become serious stuff. In less than two years, the festive rubber bracelets made by Silly Bandz and its competitors…
No. 8: Tea Party
When the confetti cleared from the midterm elections, political analysts hunkered down to calculate the tea party effect. For two years participants and observers had tried to define the loose coalition of discontented, anti-government voters, but now actual wins and losses might pin down who these rabble-rousers were. The most…