The Attention-Whore Index

Media reports and anecdotal evidence of Vivek Ramaswamy’s uncommon gift for irritating people appear not to be unfounded: you voted him the clear winner in last week’s A.W.I., with 47.1 percent of the ballots cast. Donald Trump, thwarted in his attempt at a third straight victory, finished second (25.9 percent), and both were trailed at a considerable distance by the Loch Ness Monster, Rudy Giuliani, Ángeles Béjar, and Alina Habba—none of whom were inspired to rap an Eminem song, as Ramaswamy had, and they paid the price accordingly at the polls.

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

1.

LUIS RUBIALES

By turns flip, defiant, and reluctantly sort of, kind of, half apologetic, the suspended Spanish soccer head, who planted an unwanted buss on Jenni Hermoso at the World Cup medal ceremony last month, continued to not go away. After claiming to be the “victim of a political and media lynching” who was actually “advancing feminism,” he issued a statement in which he admitted to “some obvious mistakes, which I regret sincerely”—while continuing to insist that all the “affectionate hugs” and “affectionate mutual gestures” at the ceremony were consensual.

2.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM

When you’ve long argued that you’re the only institution that can be entrusted to keep matchless artifacts from Greece, Nigeria, and many, many other places safe and secure, having parts of your collection turn up, stolen, on eBay is not a good look. Cue the inevitable sackings, hirings, and investigations. Great, but can the high-handed attitude ever change? Maybe this poll will hold a clue.

3.

CLARENCE THOMAS AND SAMUEL ALITO

The lavishly appreciated Supreme Court justices revealed in financial-disclosure statements various trips and gifts they received from Republican donors in 2022. And revealed them, this time, voluntarily.

4.

ELON MUSK

Supported a right-wing campaign to ban the Anti-Defamation League from his platform, X. (Does that make him anti-Semitic? Anti-Semitic-curious?) Skipped Burning Man but called the Nevada festival “unique in the world.... Best art on Earth,” even as this year’s edition devolved into chaos following intense flooding, with tens of thousands stranded and at least one death.

5.

JESSE WATTERS

The Fox News talking head, who had gushed endlessly about Trump’s mug shot (“I say this with an unblemished record of heterosexuality—he looks good. And he looks hard,” followed a few days later by “The mugshot has … broadened his appeal to Black Americans.... Today my garbage man told me he’s buying mugshot T-shirts for everyone he knows this Christmas”), continued his strange pronouncements: “There’s only two items that if you took it off TV, there’d be a revolution in this country: football and Fox News.... If you remove college and pro football and this channel, this country would not tolerate it.”

6.

REBECCA HILL

Rebecca who? We’d never heard of her, either—not until we saw the stories about a possible re-trial for the South Carolina lawyer-murderer-embezzler Alex Murdaugh. According to The New York Times, Hill, who was the clerk of court during Murdaugh’s trial, is accused of telling jurors “not to be ‘fooled by’ Mr. Murdaugh’s tearful testimony,” of having “private conversations with the jury forewoman,” and of “fabricat[ing] a story about a Facebook post by another juror’s ex-husband in an effort to have that juror removed.” Also, it’s claimed that “at the beginning of deliberations, Ms. Hill told jurors that ‘this shouldn’t take us long,’” and that she informed the jury’s six smokers there’d be no smoke breaks until they’d reached a verdict. Hill has also published a book about the trial.

And now for this week’s Diary …

A general whose self-published best-seller, Il Mondo al Contrario (The World Upside Down), takes shots at the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community (“Dear homosexuals, you’re not normal, get over it!”), Black Italians, leftists, feminists, Jews, environmentalists, and the unemployed—did he leave anyone out?—has been removed from the Military Geographical Institute here, and also as head of the Italian Paratroopers Brigade. Roberto Vannacci advanced the free-speech defense, implied that his 373-page screed was taken out of context, and, according to Euronews, “insisted he would write the book the same way over again if he had to.”

French president Emmanuel Macron’s pet project, the Cité Internationale de la Langue Française—otherwise known as “Macron’s folly”—is finally set to open. “The language centre has so far cost €209 million”—$225 million—reported The Times of London, “and the taxpayer is footing the whole bill.” The glass-covered courtyard “features gold words dangling from the ceiling … among them two archaic, rarely heard words that Macron likes to use: carabistouille (meaning a fib) and saperlipopette (fiddlesticks).” Compared with other grandiose vanity projects undertaken by French presidents, Macron’s has given Jacques Chirac’s Quai Branly a run for the money—literally, as the museum for Indigenous art cost the equivalent of $250 million when it opened, in 2006. But the gold standard remains François Mitterrand’s Grand Louvre, anchored by I. M. Pei’s pyramid, which took more than a decade to build and ultimately cost more than $1.5 billion.

A two-story suburban home outside Tokyo gets about 300 visitors a year, presumably because it houses the Yashio Adult Museum—the personal sex-doll collection of 49-year-old Yoshitaka Hyodo, a former sex-doll photographer whose work has been exhibited in Paris and Tokyo. The museum, said Japan Today, “not only contains dolls in various positions and outfits but also a mesmerizing assortment of other erotica, creepy exhibits and antique collectibles.” Hyodo lives alone.

School began this week at Universidad de la Libertad, a new seat of learning funded by the Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, with courses taught by his own executives, Bloomberg News reported. The libertarian media mogul, who inherited a retail fortune and is worth $14.4 billion, has lately argued against paying taxes, “which he claims only serve to prop up the corrupt political class.” He continues to “flaunt his lavish lifestyle,” which he says serves as an inspiration for others, and which has included “touring the Mediterranean on a four-floor yacht, counting down the end to his three month-long summer vacation and landing his helicopter at the new campus.”

Literal tree huggers: a stress-relief trend that started here has spread to other Chinese cities, with young people choosing a favored tree “for hugging sessions which can last from minutes to hours on end,” reported the South China Morning Post. “A chat room devoted to the unusual pastime … has amassed 10,000 members who shared more than 50,000 posts about their experience of ‘intimate contact’ with trees.” One aficionado said, “Obviously I am hugging the tree, but I feel that the tree is hugging me back.” That, Luis Rubiales, is consensual. —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