Get rid of Mail VIP list I upgraded to Mountain Lion a couple of months ago. But only just today did the VIP mailbox show up in Mail. I'd like to get rid of it. But apparently there is no way to get rid of it.

But that seems odd, since it only first showed up today, for no reason I can discover. For some reason it had an "Angieslist" subfolder, but with nothing in it.

Very odd. Annoying too.
What most likely happened is, somehow, you clicked on a star icon which appears just to the right of the senders name. I've done this myself, more than once, thinking it was a bookmark / favorite button.

That star sets the sender as a VIP – an easy way to filter emails from important contacts, which is really what the VIP under the hood.

The reason it was empty is, I assume, because there were no Angielist emails in your inbox.

To remove, and I'm assuming you found this already, is by control-clicking on the name in the VIP list and selecting Remove VIP. Restart Mail once and the VIP sidebar item should be gone for good.