His presidential campaign may be shakier than a ride on Disney’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but Ron DeSantis triumphed last week as the overwhelming victor in our Attention-Whore Index. With 64 percent of the vote, Railroad Ron trumped all-comers with his glitch-filled Twitter announcement that he would (static) run (awkward pause) for (“Is this thing on?”) president. Every unsuccessful presidential candidate needs a defining moment of failure—think Bob Dole falling off a stage, or Michael Dukakis driving a tank. Now DeSantis has his. We can all breathe a sigh of relief.
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
Elon Musk
The Most Smartest Man in the World™ displayed his exquisite timing when his neurotechnology company, Neuralink—which wants to implant a computer chip in your brain—announced it had received approval for human trials the day after Musk presided over that disastrous Twitter meltdown (see DeSantis, above). Musk was also in the control room of another disastrous launch—when his giant SpaceX Starship rocket exploded shortly after takeoff two months ago. Those brave souls signing up for the Neuralink trials must be hoping Musk steers well clear of the operating room.
2.
King Charles III
The honeymoon period is officially over for the lavishly installed new/old monarch. The British tabloids have pounced on whispers that the King was “disappointed” when Kate, the Princess of Wales, attended the Chelsea Flower Show on the same day as he did, thus siphoning off a good portion of the media coverage. Royal flacks immediately threw themselves on the exploding rumor, insisting that the King, an inveterate plant whisperer, was happy to share the limelight. With Harry and Meghan consigned to their Californian purgatory, this is a War of the Roses to watch.
3.
Recep Tayyip ErdoGan
The Turkish president dispatched his liberal opponents in the presidential-runoff elections as consummately as a pack of riot police tear-gassing a peaceful street protest. By fair means or foul—he was seen showering his supporters with money at a polling station—the Ottomaniac romped home 52–48 in an election that, while statistically close, realistically never seemed in doubt. His reward is another five years of increasingly dictatorial power. An expert at cosplaying democracy, rivaling even Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, Erdogan has proved himself a worthy member of the Big Autocratic Three—Four, if you count one of our previous presidents.
4.
Ken Paxton
It’s amazing what lengths some Republicans will go to in order to be more like Donald Trump. The Texas attorney general, who backed the short-fingered vulgarian throughout his stolen-election fantasia, not only got himself impeached for corruption, but in true Trumpian fashion blasted the “outrageous impeachment plot against me” as a “politically motivated sham.” Sure, he lacks the ALL-CAPS vim of his orange-hued mentor, but throw in a sexual-abuse trial and the kid just might make it.
5.
Martin Scorsese
“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how,” announced the director after meeting Pope Francis, “by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.” When Scorsese last made a movie about Jesus—The Last Temptation of Christ, in 1988—the Catholic Church denounced it as “morally offensive,” and he received death threats from outraged Christians. Now, in his 80th year, Scorsese is going back for a second crack at the First Coming. Not sure this is quite what Il Papa was hoping for.
6.
Dianne Feinstein
Speaking of movies, politics in Washington, D.C., can often resemble a comedy: it’s just not often that the comedy is Weekend at Bernie’s. The 89-year-old California senator is apparently so infirm that a coterie of aides wheels her around the Capitol telling her how to vote, explaining to her who Kamala Harris is, and shielding her from interacting with the public and press. They don’t always succeed. When The New York Times revealed that Feinstein had encephalitis brought on by shingles, she denied it, saying it was just a case of “bad flu” (an aide later confirmed the Times’s diagnosis). When asked what it was like to return to Congress after a three-month absence, she denied she had ever been away. She says she has no plans to leave office before her term ends, in 2025, or, perhaps, ever.
7.
Yevgeny Prigozhin
The man formally known as Putin’s chef—now head of the mercenary Wagner Group—is acting more like a war-zone Gordon Ramsay by the day. His latest foulmouthed rant against slipshod Russian-government officials came after Moscow was hit by drone attacks. A video showed Prigozhin shouting, “Smelly scumbags! What are you doing? Get your a**** up from the offices you’ve been put in to protect this country.” Once the war ends, reality-show producers will no doubt be beating down his door, although that door is likely to be a heavily reinforced one at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
8.
Al Pacino
In Michael Mann’s 1995 movie, Heat, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro appeared on-screen together for the first time. Now they are appearing together again, not on film but in the nursery. De Niro is a new father at 79; Pacino is set to be one at 83. Perhaps In Heat should be the title. —George Pendle
George Pendle is an Editor at Large at AIR MAIL