The Attention-Whore Index

There’s more than one way to win this weekly competition, and we hope that part of the fun is the sheer range of ploys people use—wittingly or not—to grab that spotlight. But even if it wasn’t by design, the approach the Sussexes took recently earned all the subsequent murmurs of appreciation. It was dazzling: fly in to New York for an award, let the photographers descend, exaggerate your ride home so it sounds like a French Connection–caliber chase scene, and there you have worldwide headlines. Harry and Meghan earned 71.8 percent of your votes, with Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump a distant second, tied at 11.5 percent. (Together again!) Trailing badly, like so many outmaneuvered paparazzi, were Princess Kate, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Ja Morant, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Nicolas Sarkozy.

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

1.

PRINCE ANDREW

Reportedly has no intention of acceding to his brother King Charles’s wishes and vacating the 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park to move into the cozier, 5,000-square-foot Frogmore Cottage. In 2003, an uncharacteristically canny Andrew reportedly signed a 75-year lease on the lodge, so the chances of his being Frogmore-marched out are said to be slim.

2.

RON D_ESANTIS

The Scourge of Disney officially crashed and glitched his way into the presidential campaign with a live-streamed malfunctioning Twitter fiasco presided over by Elon Musk. (Was anyone really surprised that things went terribly, terribly wrong?) Oh, for the good old days—earlier in the week, that is—when DeSantis’s biggest embarrassment was an N.A.A.C.P.-issued “travel advisory” against Florida because of the governor’s “systemic attack on democracy and civil rights.” What’s next, video footage of him striding about with toilet paper stuck to his shoe?

3.

JEFFREY EPSTEIN

It was revealed that, in 2010, Epstein threatened to blackmail Bill Gates over an apparent affair the Microsoft founder had with a Russian bridge player. Revealed only slightly less recently: That the billionaire Peter Thiel met with Epstein several times. That Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Epstein’s victims. That the president of Bard College received $150,000 from him. That Epstein’s two private islands, site of his trafficking in and abuse of young women and under-age girls, are to be turned into a resort. And so on. In short, he’s claiming a lot of attention these days, especially for a dead person.

4.

SUELLA BRAVERMAN

The British home secretary, caught speeding last summer, used an aide to try to arrange for her punishment—a driving-awareness course—to be meted out in a private session: no awkward in-person seminars with other transgressors, nothing online where she might be recognized. (It didn’t work, so she took the points on her license and paid the fine.) By directing a civil servant to try to get her out of it, she might have gone against the ministerial code. Though not if you ask her: “I’m focused on delivering for the British people, doing my job as home secretary and what I will say is that, in my view, I’m confident that nothing untoward has happened.” Mistakes, in other words, weren’t made.

5.

YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN

Announced, prematurely, that his army of mercenaries had taken Bakhmut, which they eventually did. Vladimir Putin congratulated him on the occasion of that Ukraine city’s “liberation.” (“Liberation,” in this instance, is Russian for “destruction at a cost of 20,000 of our troops and who knows whether we can hold on to it anyway.”)

6.

BEYONCÉ

An unfortunate confluence of news stories makes her a candidate this week. In North London, about 30 homeless families being housed in a Travelodge will be moved to “alternative temporary accommodation,” according to The Guardian, to make room for fans who’d booked the rooms to attend the singer’s upcoming nearby shows. Awkward! But especially when Forbes is simultaneously reporting on Beyoncé’s rather different housing issues: she and Jay-Z just bought a $200 million spread in Malibu, the most expensive home sale ever in California.

And now for this week’s Diary …

Like Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show, Michelangelo’s David can only be shown from the waist up—at least in subway ads for Barolo, a local Italian restaurant. Barolo’s original idea, which had the sculpture eating a slice of pizza with the tagline “It doesn’t get more Italian,” was rejected by the media group in charge of the ad space. A revision, with a strategically placed fig leaf in the form of an Italian-flag sticker, was also deemed too risqué. A third attempt—David seen belly-button-up—was approved, but as a Barolo executive noted, “It’s not the 1500s any more, it’s 2023. Are we really saying that the people of Glasgow can’t handle seeing a naked statue?”

A wealthy couple in this Surrey village has accused a “menacing gang” of elderly neighbors of harassment “in a series of incidents that include ‘spooky gazing’ and the use of a telephoto lens,” The Times of London reported. The couple have a $3.2 million house in Brook and want to build further on the property, which includes a tennis court and swimming pool. It was alleged that one of the opponents of the new plans, an 81-year-old retired banker, “appeared on the roof of his house, ‘mimicking the voice’ from his rich neighbours’ security system.”

Police have arrested 15 people on charges of using online-romance scams to swindle 155 fellow citizens out of $2.6 million. Two brothers and their mother allegedly ran the syndicate from a duplex with a private swimming pool, “impersonat[ing] people from other countries and then befriend[ing] potential targets through social media and dating apps,” the South China Morning Post reported. “After developing a romantic relationship with the victims, the bogus lovers invented different excuses for needing money.” According to police, the scammers and scammees never met.

The recent wedding of the 65-year-old mayor of this Brazilian city—his fifth—to a bride of barely 16 was only slightly controversial, and completely legal. “Last year, Brazilian notaries registered 12,509 marriages in which at least one of the participants was aged 16 or 17,” according to El País, “the vast majority” of those being female. Politicians are doing their part. “President Lula da Silva is 21 years older than his wife … and his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, is 27 years older than his,” noted the newspaper, adding that the presidential record belongs to Michel Temer (president, 2016–18), with 43 years on his spouse.

The status of the plentiful rabbits in Les Invalides gardens has lately been the subject of controversy. Their defenders won a battle last year that erased the Leporidae’s “pest” label, but now police say the rabbits have become a nuisance and want to regulate them again. So the Invalides rabbits might soon be facing arrest, followed by an “evaluation.” Which led one opponent of the proposal to ask (according to the Google Translate iteration we always find far more entertaining than any accurate one): “How are they captured, and why? What is the objective, what diseases are sought? Will they be released on the spot or elsewhere?” Enfin, “We will seize justice.” Be staying in tune! —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 at AIR MAIL