The Attention-Whore Index

A new year of Attention-Whore Index polling has begun! But there was nothing new about week one, which was dominated by an all-too-familiar, all-too-orange scowl. Donald Trump won by a margin almost as big as his current lead in the Iowa polls, claiming 38.5 percent of your vote. Florida’s fun couple, the Zieglers—the family-values conservative leaders who admitted to a threesome and were accused of rape—were second with 19.9 percent, ex–Harvard president Claudine Gay third at 18 percent, and Nikki Haley fourth (13.7 percent).

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

1.

LLOYD AUSTIN

The secretary of defense failed to alert the White House or, from the sound of it, pretty much anyone else when he was hospitalized for several days following complications from prostate surgery. (Well, it’s not like he has an important government position or anything.) Austin later admitted he “could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed.”

2.

LAUREN BOEBERT

The Daily Mail headline says it all: “Lauren Boebert DENIES punching her ex-husband in the nose twice after he made ‘lewd advances’ at restaurant in her district — but admits putting hand on his face ‘to try to keep him back.’” Because do you really want to know more? Or even that much?

3.

ELON MUSK

Well, it might explain a few things. Musk’s alleged recreational drug use (LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, magic mushrooms, ketamine) was reported in The Wall Street Journal and denied by the SpaceX/Tesla C.E.O., whose lawyer told the newspaper that Musk is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.” Fine. But hang on: Why “regularly and randomly” tested?

4.

DONALD TRUMP

So many options. We could mention that he said he wants the U.S. economy to “crash” (“I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months”), or that he used a court appearance to rail at the judge (“What’s happened here, sir, is a fraud on me.... I know this is boring to you. You have your own agenda”),or that he went birther on South Carolina–born Nikki Haley (as he had previously on, let’s see, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, and Ted Cruz. Hmm). But instead we’ll go with the video he posted on Truth Social that begins with this narration: “And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump.” And goes on from there (“God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state’”). Again, this is Truth Social, not Saturday Night Live. Possibly the strangest moment: a clip of Melania tripping in her heels … but—praise God—her ever gallant husband is there to catch her.

5.

BOEING

The company’s stock shares tanked, all because of a little midair fuselage-panel shedding, followed by high wind inside the cabin, an emergency landing, and some grounded jets. At least the passengers and crew on that Alaska Airlines flight were all right.

6.

PRINCE ANDREW

The newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents put this already marginalized royal squarely back in the public eye—embarrassing even without new details such as the alleged daily massages he allegedly received while allegedly visiting Epstein in Palm Beach. Also alleged in the British press: the likelihood that his brother the King will nudge him further toward the fringes of the family by downsizing him to a smaller property, Frogmore Cottage. Its previous tenants include Harry and Meghan and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Andrew might consider changing the locks at the seven-bedroom Royal Lodge, located in Windsor Great Park, where he currently resides.

7.

CHIP WILSON

In a Forbes profile, the Lululemon founder, who stepped down as C.E.O. in 2013 (though not before he’d blamed “some women’s bodies” for any see-through issues with his brand’s yoga pants), complained about his old company’s “whole diversity and inclusion thing,” and about how “they’re trying to become like the Gap, everything to everybody.” The Lululemon response: “Chip Wilson does not speak for Lululemon, and his comments do not reflect our company views or beliefs.” Something, presumably, that Lululemon and Wilson would agree on.

8.

Bob Menendez

As the bribery charges piled up like so many neatly stacked bars of gold bullion, Menendez took to the Senate floor for 20 minutes to tearfully (and defiantly) proclaim his innocence: “The United States Attorney’s Office is engaged not in a prosecution, but a persecution. They seek a victory, not justice.... There is no evidence of the giving or receiving of cash and gold bars.... I will not step aside.... I have never chosen the easy path—never have, never will, and will not do so now.” Etc.

And now for this week’s Diary …

Two men who targeted Prince Harry and his son, Archie, on their neo-Nazi podcast have been jailed on terrorism charges. Christopher Gibbons and Tyrone Patten-Walsh “espoused racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and misogynistic views and encouraged listeners … to commit violent acts against ethnic minorities,” Euronews reported. Gibbons called for Harry to be “prosecuted and judicially killed for treason” and said four-year-old Archie was a “creature [who] should be put down.” Gibbons was sentenced to eight years in prison, Patten-Walsh to seven.

Two children were seized by eight masked men in a café in this Danish town as they watched New Year’s Eve fireworks with their father—apparently victims of a custody battle between the German steakhouse heiress Christina Block and her ex-husband, Stephan Hensel. The 10-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl were later found safe at their mother’s house in Hamburg. “German and Danish courts had failed to settle the dispute over the two youngest of the couple’s four children after Hensel refused to bring them back to Germany from a summer holiday they spent with him at his home in Denmark in 2021,” said The Times of London. Meanwhile, a Danish court has issued an arrest warrant for Block, who reportedly “admitted to German prosecutors that she ordered the abduction.”

The Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo announced that in 2023 the costs it incurred from shoplifting exceeded its post-tax profits, $110 million to $88 million. “Retailers worldwide have reported an increase in shoplifting as soaring inflation raised prices faster than wages,” according to the Financial Times. A spokeswoman for Jumbo said the chain would continue self-checkout and self-scanning, even though “analysts have highlighted the ease with which customers can steal goods through these routes.” Jumbo’s C.E.O. said that “[p]eople are becoming increasingly sophisticated in not paying for products. You sometimes fall over in shock to witness how creative people are to take products without paying.”

When Nino Frassica was here filming a TV series, his cat, Hiro, went missing. The actor offered a reward amounting to $5,500, “leading people from across Italy to descend on the town,” reported The Guardian. “Some came accompanied with search dogs and drones.” The reward was doubled, but no luck, and Frassica returned to Rome. Then the accusations started. “[T]wo local families claimed they were accused by Frassica, his wife and her daughter of being involved in the cat’s disappearance,” said the newspaper, and “after Frassica cited the address of one of the complainants in a video shared on social media, claiming that Hiro was being kept there,” prosecutors began investigating the actor on charges of “defamation, stalking and incitement to criminal activity.” Hiro remains M.I.A.

When it became clear that the rocket launched Monday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, was not in fact going to succeed in landing on the moon, it also became clear that the Peregrine mission’s cargo would not be reaching the moon, either. As the Daily Star noted, “The ashes of the cast of TV’s Star Trek are set to float in space for eternity after a rescue bid failed. Mission bosses have abandoned plans to give them a final resting place on the Moon after their spacecraft sprang a fuel leak.” The late members of the cast whose ashes are aboard include Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry; his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry (who played Christine Chapel); DeForest Kelley (McCoy); James Doohan (Scotty); Nichelle Nichols (Uhura); associate producer and director Robert Justman; and special-effects creator Greg Jein. —George Kalogerakis

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