At first glance, Rachel Uchitel is a sympathetic figure. Before becoming the subject of tabloid fodder for her alleged affair with golfer Tiger Woods, the former Bloomberg News producer lost her fiancé on 9/11 when he perished in the World Trade Center. After an emotional breakdown followed by a short-lived marriage, Uchitel became a nightclub promoter and gal about town, telling a New York Citybased magazine last year that while she's been "romantically linked to a famous baseball player, a Broadway star, a musician and various film and television actors," she would "never kiss and tell." No matter, since gossip rags like the National Enquirer and TMZ.com were all too happy to do the telling for her. While Uchitel has consistently denied rumors of a fling, Woods publicly apologized for unnamed "transgressions" less than a week after crashing his car near his Florida home during a reported domestic dispute with his wife. (One Hong Kong paper took the liberty of creating an animated re-creation of the alleged domestic skirmish and subsequent crash, in a style reminiscent of Mortal Kombat a really, really sad version of Mortal Kombat.)
The Top 10 Everything of 2009
- Top 10 Albums
- Top 10 Animal Stories
- Top 10 Apologies
- Top 10 Art Exhibitions
- Top 10 Awkward Moments
- Top 10 Best Business Deals
- Top 10 Breakups
- Top 10 Buzzwords
- Top 10 Children's Books
- Top 10 Crime Stories
- Top 10 Editorial Cartoons
- Top 10 Facebook Stories
- Top 10 Fashion Faux Pas
- Top 10 Fashion Moments
- Top 10 Feuds
- Top 10 Fiction Books
- Top 10 Fleeting Celebrities
- Top 10 Gadgets
- Top 10 Green Ideas
- Top 10 Heroes
- Top 10 iPhone Apps
- Top 10 Late-Night Jokes
- Top 10 Magazine Covers
- Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
- Top 10 Movie Performances
- Top 10 Movies
- Top 10 New Species
- Top 10 News Stories
- Top 10 Nonfiction Books
- Top 10 Oddball News Stories
- Top 10 Pariahs
- Top 10 Pictures of the Year
- Top 10 Plays and Musicals
- Top 10 Political Gaffes
- Top 10 Quotes
- Top 10 Religion Stories
- Top 10 Scandals
- Top 10 Scientific Discoveries
- Top 10 Songs
- Top 10 Sports Moments
- Top 10 T-Shirt-Worthy Slogans
- Top 10 TV Ads
- Top 10 TV Episodes
- Top 10 TV Series
- Top 10 Tweets
- Top 10 Underreported Stories
- Top 10 Untruths
- Top 10 Video Games
- Top 10 Viral Videos
- Top 10 Worst Biz Deals
TIME charts the highs and lows of the past year in 50 wide-ranging lists