The Attention-Whore Index

Well, here’s a shocker: despite his unprecedented achievement last week—becoming the first president to be criminally indicted (or criminally “indicated,” as he put it)—Donald Trump’s three-week streak at the top of the Attention-Whore Index came to a stunning end. His acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene edged him out, 41.1 percent to 38.1 percent, though presumably Trump will claim that he won in a landslide. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a distant third, with 9.1. percent, followed by James Patterson, Ron DeSantis, Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, and Marlène Schiappa.

The new poll should be very interesting indeed. It’s all in your hands.

The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …

1.

CLARENCE THOMAS

“I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” the Supreme Court justice said in a 2020 interview. “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.… I come from regular stock, and I prefer that—I prefer being around that.” In other words, just a regular guy who over a quarter-century has nevertheless had to endure a relentless barrage of lavish, unwanted, and undeclared gifts from his “dearest friend,” the right-wing political donor and Hitler-memorabilia-collecting Texas real-estate developer Harlan Crow.

2.

JILL BIDEN

Created a flap when she floated—then walked back—the well-meaning but tone-deaf notion that maybe N.C.A.A. women’s-basketball runners-up Iowa (a predominantly white team) could come to the White House along with champions L.S.U. (a predominantly Black team) “because they played such a good game.”

3.

THE ROYALS

Significant stirrings from these perennial contenders, in what is surely the beginning of an aggressive run-up to King Charles’s coronation: £10 banknotes with Charles on them went into production. The King was said to be “at loggerheads” with the Church of England over how religiously diverse his coronation ceremony should be. According to the invitation, Queen Consort Camilla will, on that day, become Queen Camilla. And the Sussexes—remember them?—finally R.S.V.P.’d.

4.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE

Shared her impressions of New York City. (“I can’t comprehend how people live there. It was repulsive. It smells bad.”) Ostentatiously bought a crate of Coors Light beer to protest Bud Light’s working with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, after which it was pointed out that Coors Light is a longtime supporter of the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community.

5.

EMMANUEL MACRON

Largely reviled at home, the French president went to China and played the statesman. Macron’s grandiose welcome—military parade, state banquet—upstaged Ursula von der Leyen’s concurrent visit, which saw the European Commission president dismissed on Chinese social media as an American puppet.

6.

THE DALAI LAMA

Bad move, asking a 10-year-old boy who wanted a hug to kiss you on the cheek as well, and then on the lips, and then asking the child about sucking your tongue. Stranger still, the exchange—in Dharamshala, India—took place in public, and on video.

7.

DONALD TRUMP

Held an Easter brunch at Mar-a-Lago at which his wife actually showed up—though she remained unacknowledged: “I have a son here [Don Jr.] who has done a great job, another son here [Eric] who has done a great job. And Tiffany and Ivanka. And Barron will be great someday. He is tall and he is smart.” As for the rest of us, Trump sent out holiday wishes on Truth Social: “HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING THOSE THAT DREAM ENDLESSLY OF DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF DREAMING ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.”

And now for this week’s Diary …

Viewers of the popular North Korean TV show The Taehongdang Party Secretary, i.e., most of you, have undoubtedly noticed that on reruns of the show the handsome Choe Ung Chol has been digitally replaced by another actor. The speculation: Kim Jong Un doesn’t much care for him anymore. “Choe may have fallen out of favor with the regime due to his playboy lifestyle” and because of his ties to an uncle of Kim’s who was executed in 2013, reported Insider. That late uncle, you might recall, was charged with several crimes, but—most fatally—“he didn’t applaud Kim enthusiastically enough.”

The largely tax-free city is being called “the new Monaco,” with skyrocketing prices and a population that’s 80 to 90 percent foreign and overwhelmingly wealthy. Along with all the usual indicators, such as consumer costs, housing prices, and inflation rates, there’s this: at a recent charity auction, a rare license plate, P 7—“which, at first glance, looks like the number 7 alone, with the P off to the side,” reported Bloomberg—went for $15 million. One- and two-digit license plates are coveted in Dubai.

Finland’s increasingly popular sport of reindeer racing concluded its season with a win by Veneri, who pulled—via harnesses—jockey Janne Alatalo around the slushy one-kilometer oval in just over a minute and a half, faster than 13 other competitors. Now comes the endless off-season.

A vending machine in this Japanese city offers different cuts of black-bear meat supplied by local hunters, reported the BBC, with eight-ounce portions (fatty or lean) going for about $17. Japan has “the world’s highest number of vending machines per capita,” offering everything (or so it seems) from umbrellas to insects.

A tape of a concert the Beatles performed at a private school on April 4, 1963, has surfaced. John Bloomfield, a student at Stowe School, had made the lo-fi, 22-song recording and stored it for 60 years. Samira Ahmed of The Guardian listened to the tape and made note of “John Lennon’s saucy jokes and voices” and “Paul McCartney’s polite thanks,” and how much the schoolboys loved Ringo, “shouting out his name.”

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is showing a real gift for misdirection—or what Francesco Strazzari, a professor of international relations, called “a weapon of mass distraction” on Euronews. With Italy facing vexing climate, economic, incarceration, and immigration issues, the government has in recent months met those problems head-on … by banning illegal raves, ChatGPT, and the production of synthetic foods. Last week, a politician in Meloni’s right-wing party proposed legislation that would eliminate English words from all official communications, with transgressors facing potential fines up to $110,000. Avanti! —George Kalogerakis

George Kalogerakis, one of the original editor-writers at Spy, later worked for Vanity Fair, New York, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. A co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War, he is a Writer at Large for AIR MAIL