#11 Newspapers

Since the invention of movable type until the mid-20th century, the easiest way to communicate to a mass audience was by printed word, whether an early pamphlet or a later newspaper. If you had a politician to smear, a war to start, or a room to rent, the newspaper was a cheap and effective way to get the word out.

Now, of course, white people use PACs to smear politicians, cable news and Colin Powell to start wars, and Craigslist to find tenants (among many, many other things). The newspaper used to be the sole source of info on sports scores, stock prices, job listings, local news, local deaths, local weddings, local affairs, and of course, the funnies.

But white people have moved on to newer, better sources for their info. And who can blame them? It's so much more fun to get your news from The Daily Show and I Can Has Cheezburger!

#10 John Edwards

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

John Edwards, former presidential candidate, former vice-presidential candidate, former senator, who currently holds no public office has tossed out his shiny good name to be dragged through the mud. Admitting to ABC's Bob Woodruff last week that allegations made in a series of Enquirer articles are, in fact, based on fact. One of the Democratic party's golden boys—with his toothy grin, dimpled children, and suffocating earnestness—is just like the rest; as his wife recovered from cancer in 2006, Edwards schtupped a member of his campaign staff, and with it our idealism—even if we didn’t know it yet.

And boy does he have that wounded puppy look down.

Doesn't it just make you want to go give him a big hug? No. NO. We're mad…betrayed…misled…crestfallen. Weeping at the corpse of our shattered dreams.

#9 Manifest Destiny

From sea to shining sea? Damn straight.

Back in the day, the U.S. didn't need excuses like WMDs or evildoers to invade territories that didn't belong to us. We took it because it was our destiny!

Who do we have to thank for that idea? The press. Journalist John O'Sullivan penned two articles in 1845 in which he argued in favor of the annexation of Texas and Oregon. "That claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent," O'Sullivan wrote.

White people didn't actually latch on to the concept of manifest destiny, however, until a ornery Whig named Robert Winthrop ridiculed the notion in Congress. "I suppose the right of a manifest destiny to spread will not be admitted to exist in any nation except the universal Yankee nation," he quipped.

Whatever you say, Winthrop. After that, it was westward ho for many an adventurous white person, who believed America had a mission to spread its Republican democracy across this great land (hmm, sound familiar?).

The term was eventually put to rest after white people had had their fill of land grabbing. O'Sullivan, sadly, died destitute in 1895 after a battle with the flu.

#8 Dave Coulier

Since the devastating blow to popular culture that was the cancellation of Full House after a mere eight seasons, Bob Saget has become well-known his remarkably un-Danny Tanner like standup routine, which has, over the years, included some questionable material about diminutive co-stars the Olsen Twins and led to equally blue cinematic utterances such as the now-infamous line, “I used to suck dick for coke,” from the 1998 film, Half Baked.

Fellow standup and former Full House co-star, Dave Coulier, has taken the opposite path, largely maintaining the squeaky clean image he made for himself playing the role of Joey Gladstone on the 1987 sitcom.

During the show’s run, Coulier also co-hosted a spin-off of Saget’s America’s Funniest Home Videos called America’s Funniest People, which traded in Videos’ guy-getting-kicked-in-the-balls motif for a pastiche of people lip-synching to awful songs, making fart noises, and recounting jokes so bad that their mere telling confused middle-America into believing that Coulier’s Jackalope character was a work of comedy genius on par with Mama’s Family and the early, edgier work of Jeff Foxworthy.

Coulier further parlayed his wholesome image into voice work for cartoons like Muppet Babies, Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, and the animated classic, Rude Dog and the Dweebs. In fact, the Michigan-born actor has the distinct honor of being one of the only American celebrities with a persona so bland that he is routinely mistaken for a Canadian, a matter not likely helped by the actor’s oft-professed passion for hockey and real-life Canuck, former You Can’t Do That on Television star, Alanis Morissette, who is rumored to have penned her scathing first hit “You Ought to Know” about the comedian. Isn’t that ironic?

Since the end of Full House, Coulier’s unique brand of family-friendly humor has fallen out of favor with white people on both sides of the American-Canadian divide who have largely issued a collective “cut-it-out” to the comedian, despite an appearance as Nancy Kerrigan’s partner on Skating With the Stars, a position almost certainly awarded to Coulier as the cast member least likely to slip in off-color Tanya Harding joke.

#7 Walking the Plank

After a hard day spent raping, pillage, and generally swashbuckling, there’s something anticlimactic in the act of simply pushing a scurvy dog off the side of a boat. Fortunately, as world-renowned white people from Gilbert and Sullivan to Gena Davis and Geoffrey Rush have taught us, any Jolly Roger-waving privateer worth his weight in gold dubloons likes few things in the world more than putting on a show.

The ritual of plank walking, fortunately, much like the bygone days of public square hangings and today’s ever-popular phenomenon of reality programming, marries the ever-popular phenomenon of bloodlust with the desire for high quality entertainment.

A single board is extended over the edge of a ship. The victim is then forced to walk its length, oft through the gentle prodding of large sharp pieces of metal. The act of walking the plank is considered to be a form of psychological torture, which, admittedly sucks rather a lot, but ultimately pales in comparison to the act of being eaten by lots and lots of sharks, which generally occurs soon thereafter.

Walking the plank has generally fallen out of favor amongst white people, largely replaced by such methods of punishment as stern talkings to, knowing sighs, shameful head shaking, and time outs while the offending party thinks about what he or she had done.

#6 Melrose Place

It's usually hard to pinpoint the exact moment when a network fell to crap, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the end of FOX falls in the spring of 1999. Ending its seven-season run, Aaron Spelling's addictive Melrose Place became 90210 for grown ups. After the departure of Beverly Hills darlin' Kelly Taylor, who had been dating a Melrose resident, MP showed twentysomethings just what they were missing: a sideburn-less, back-stabbing, husband-stealing, pool-sex-having, apartment complex rife with impurity and where unattractive people are all but nonexistent.

A primetime serial the likes of which had been missing since the days of Dallas MP proved, yet again, what white people want to watch: pretty white people living lives of not-so-quiet desperation, hatching plots centering on characters returning from the dead, lobotomies, split personalities, and apartment bombings.

In order to maintain a guise of legitimacy, several members of the MP production team helped form the GALA Committee. GALA brought a much-needed sense of "art" to the set, slipping in original artworks as props throughout the show's fourth and fifth seasons. And to ensure its audience was intellectually stimulated, the artwork often bore political subtext; for example, when Allison is pregnant her blanket pattern is the molecular structure of RU-486 (aka: the morning after pill). (Wouldn’t some sort of safe sex message have made more sense?)

MP's white cred has been cemented with shout-outs on several other series including Seinfeld and Friends. The show has since been banished to SOAPNet syndication and DVD obscurity.

#5 The Fanny Pack

Over the years, the kangaroo has taught man many important skills, such as the importance of a well-timed right hook and the value of releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. That said, it’s still important to draw a well-defined line between our marsupial brethren and ourselves.

As a species, we’ve pioneered countless ways of transporting our goods and offspring, such the car seat, the backpack, the hipster-favored messenger bag, and of course, that hobo mainstay, the tied-up polka-dot bandana at the end of a stick. All are perfectly acceptable methods in the proper context—it’s the moment that man decided to co-opt the kangaroo pouch that he ran into trouble.

The fanny pack hit the apex of its popularity in the late-80s/early 90s, coinciding, like fellow former white person favorite, Saved By the Bell, with the brief Caucasian affinity toward neon colors. This critic mass of unfortunate white style choices led to the advent of compact waist-riding pouches that could be easily spotted up to 100 yards away. Fortunately for now repentant wearers, however, the runaway success of the accessory was such for a period of a half-dozen years that the wearer would likely never be alone in a crowd.

Fittingly borrowing its name from an endearing term for “ass,” the fanny pack is traditionally used to carry such easily-pocketed items as change, keys, and cash. Other objects, such as prophylactics may have also been transported in this manner, but its likely that, due to their unfortunate fashion choice, the fanny packer rarely had occasion to utilize such protection. The transport of cellphones is also rather questionable, as the advent of truly portable handsets did not overlap with the pack’s success. Attempting to shove what is now lovingly referred to as a "Zack Morris cellphone" into one of these packs would have no doubt resulted in humorous consequences.

Fanny packs are still spotting on occasion in the wild, often on the waists of obese mid-westerners with an affinity toward umbrella hats.

#4 Witch Hunts

In the days before the 24-hour cable news cycle and global satellite imaging, it was a bit harder to put your finger on why crops failed or devastating droughts crippled entire regions of Europe. So in the 17th century (to borrow as-of-then-uncoined term), it was only natural to adopt a scapegoat—a pattern that we'll see repeated many times over.

Some sociologists have, in fact, identified strong correlations between European crop failures and rises in witch hunts, trials, and executions. While incidents of witch (or sorcery) hunting can be traced as far back as the 18th century B.C. in ancient Egypt and Babylon, witch hunters really hit their stride in Western Europe in the 1600 and 1700s.

While it's hard to land on an exact head count, historians have settled on the total number of witch-trial-related executions landing somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 pointy hats; some estimates range as high at 100,000. Witch trials as we know them (think Salem, The Crucible, and Monty Python), first came about around 1450 A.D in Switzerland, but gained steam in France, England, and Germany, where heads really got rolling in the late 1500s. The first on-record witch trial and burning took place in Wiesensteig in southwestern Germany in 1563, where 63 were burned for "true and horrifying deeds."

But come now, only a crazy person would blame the bad luck of a community on someone's pact with the devil, right? Right? Wrong. Historians have traced the origin of the idea of witchcraft to intellectuals who had a steadfast belief in "maleifiium" (aka: bad deeds) which came to signify that those who could control events, seemingly communicate with spirits, or make it rain had signed a pact with Satan.

Leave it to the British, though, to spoil everyone else's fun. The Witchcraft Act of 1734 more or less signaled the end of the European hunt as we know it. The Act limited deeds of witchcraft to the likes of street-corner fortune tellers and mediums for falsely representing any ability to conjure spirits. The last so-called witch was executed in England in 1716 and the last on record overall was in Switzerland around 1811.

The most recent prosecution under the Act (repealed in 1951) was the case of Helen Duncan in 1944; Duncan was painted publicly as a defrauder of the public, but a more likely assessment centers on authorities' fear that her clairvoyance might compromise details of the impending D-Day military action. What's that I was saying about scapegoats?

#3: Lead Poisoning

Finding creative ways to ingest or absorb toxic metals was all the rage for thousands of years.

In 6,500 BC, you could wear poisonous lead around your neck as jewelry. Five full millenia later, you could get lead poisoning from lead dishes or cups, from smearing lead makeup all over you face, or from drinking wine that was sweetened with—I kid you not—lead acetate, or lead sugar. Ancient Rome ran its drinking water through lead pipes, and the only reason that didn't kill them all was because mineral deposits would form on the pipes, shielding the water from the lead.

Almost two thousand years after that, white people were powdering their hair and their wigs with lead powders, apparently because wearing a white wig was the only possible way to make yourself look whiter once you're wearing a waistcoat, ruffled shirt, breeches, tights, and big buckles on your shoes.

Basically, the best way for a white person to be hot 300 years ago was to liberally apply white lead powder to your face, hair, lungs, and blood stream. The toxic lead levels in your blood would give you gout and make you crazy, but you'd be hot.

Lead poisoning is no longer popular within white society; in fact, ingesting lead in the form of old paint chips is considered somewhat gauche.

#2 Mead

A few millennia before wine coolers became the alcoholic beverage of choice for white people everywhere, all of the coolest Caucasians from Aristotle to Beowulf were regularly imbibing this potent potable also known as “honey wine.” The drink got its nickname due to its inclusion of that sweetest of bee excretions. Mead also traditionally contains water and yeast. Variations on the drink contain different combinations of spices, herbs, and fruits.

It’s believed by some that the drink’s usage in early wedding rituals helped coin the term “honeymoon,” which in turn lent its name to a popular white person mid-50s situation comedy starring Jackie Gleason whose character Ralph Kramden advocates light-hearted spousal abuse, incidentally, a common side effect of excessive mead consumption.

Aside from the aforementioned case of Beowulf (whose climatic scene unfolds in a mead hall), the drink has been a perennial favorite in white people books over the years, making appearances in everything from the works of Tolkien to Neil Gaiman.

Mead has long since fallen out of favor amongst the majority of white people, having long since been eclipsed by its spiritual successors, Brooklyn Lager and Zima.

#1 Pat Boone

Hard to believe, I know, but there was a time in American popular culture when the most socially unacceptable aspect of Little Richard’s public persona was the color of his skin. Long before Richard was serenading senior citizens at Sunday breakfast buffets and being just generally freaky for the entire cast of Full House, Pat Boone crooned the rock ‘n roll pioneer’s 1956 single “Long Tall Sally” all the way to the number one spot on the pop charts.

Richard’s own rendition managed to get no further than number two on the R&B charts. The song has since been remade by such notable white people as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Kinks, Led Zepplin, and the Scorpions, but this direct descendant of famous white person, Daniel Boone was the true pioneer of whitewashing ditty. Pat Boone struck white gold several more times in the heady days of the mid-50s with a number of equally whitastic covers, including “Ain’t That a Shame,” "At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama)," and “Chains of Love.”

Boone joined a Pentecostal church in the late-60s, and lost out on a number of acting roles for his refusal to share screen-time (and lock lips) with such notable white women as Shirley Jones and Marilyn Monroe. In the 80s, Larry Flynt’s Hustler dared to darken Boone’s super-white image with a less-than-flattering photospread. Bone fought back a decade later, with In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, embracing the current popular choice of white kids everywhere, heavy metal.

While Boone has largely fallen out of favor, thus giving his entry into the hall of Stuff White People Liked, has continued to happily embrace such bastions of whiteness as Fox News, George W. Bush, and Mel Gibson.