Just to mount a really half-hearted defense of Cracked here… that's not actually true. Writers pitch their own article ideas like anywhere else.

I also always assumed Tasha was black. What's up with that?

Eh, I didn't mean that to sound elitist at all, I'm pretty middlebrow myself. I just usually expect the AV Club to be smarter than me. In this case the list seemed to be composed largely of well-known things I quite like (Smith, Franzen, Atwood, Lethem, errr… Klosterman) and well-known things that don't really appeal…

meh
This list seems shockingly middlebrow, despite the fact that I don't actively dislike anything on it (except perhaps Freakonomics). Go figure.