The Attention-Whore Index

It’s early yet—2024 has barely begun to bestow its indignities upon us—but so far, the Attention-Whore Index has mirrored the race for the Republican nomination for president: the only real question is who, at any given moment, is in second place. Last week that slot—in the A.W.I.—went to Lauren Boebert (11.7 percent), on the strength of having “put her hand on” her ex-husband’s face in a restaurant. Attention-shy defense secretary Lloyd Austin (9.5 percent) was, counter-intuitively, next, followed by Bob Menendez—defiant, aggrieved, still in office—at 8.4 percent. The winner? Donald Trump again (46.8. percent), running hard as ever to avoid having to accessorize his orange mug with a matching jumpsuit.

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

1.

HUNTER BIDEN

Not exactly flying under the radar: having defied a congressional subpoena for a closed-door deposition, he made a surprise cameo at a panel that was debating whether to hold him in contempt, left quickly, and later said, through his lawyers, that he would comply with “a new proper subpoena.”

2.

RICHARD BRANSON

Days after his name popped up in connection with alleged Jeffrey Epstein–related sex tapes, he made sure his name popped up again in connection with treating Alan Bates, the popular hero of Britain’s Post Office scandal, to an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation. Wag that dog!

3.

GIORGIA MELONI

The Italian prime minister didn’t rush to condemn a gathering of 150 young men—a wing of her far-right Brothers of Italy party—giving an illegal fascist salute, in unison, in central Rome. Didn’t condemn it at all, in fact.

4.

PRINCE HARRY

Yes, he was a helicopter co-pilot and gunner in Afghanistan in 2012. Still, inducting him as a “Living Legend of Aviation” in a Beverly Hills ceremony was more than some in the aviation world could swallow, and an online petition asking the group to rethink the honor drew more than 11,000 signatures. But a living legend he nevertheless officially became, joining aviators such as Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, it’s true, but also occasional pilots Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, as well as space-travel dabblers Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and William Shatner. The same day as his induction, he dropped his wobbly libel lawsuit against The Mail on Sunday, leaving him with a combined legal bill—his and the newspaper’s—of nearly $1 million. That’s what a Living Legend of Aviation might call “a crash and burn.”

5.

DONALD TRUMP

“Without immunity, it would be very hard for a president to enjoy his or her ‘golden years’ of retirement. They would be under siege by radical, out-of-control prosecutors, much like I am, but without the retirement!” Won Iowa. Disrupted his second defamation trial (brought by E. Jean Carroll, who won the first) and said he “would love” to be tossed out for his unruliness. Looking worryingly spry.

6.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Not amused: According to one of her staff, the Queen was “as angry as I’ve ever seen her” (reported the journalist Robert Hardman in a new book)—angry about the Sussex-generated notion that she was “supportive” of Harry and Meghan’s calling their daughter Lilibet after her own childhood nickname. “I don’t own the palaces, I don’t own the paintings,” she supposedly said. “The only thing I own is my name. And now they’ve taken that.”

7.

Nikki Haley

“We’re not a racist country…. We’ve never been a racist country.”

8.

Jane Seymour

A mere sampling of Seymour-centric People headlines during the past year or so includes—“Jane Seymour Says She’s ‘Never Been Happier’ with New Boyfriend,” “Jane Seymour Poses in Plunging One-Piece Swimsuit and Makeup-Free Selfie in Vacation Snaps,” “Jane Seymour Poses on Boat in Hot-Pink Swimsuit: ‘Seas the Day!,’” “Jane Seymour Sports a Ruffled One-Piece Swimsuit During Visit to an Elephant Sanctuary”—suggests that in addition to her O.B.E. the actress could reasonably be awarded a T.M.I. No surprise, then, to learn this week in an essay she wrote for Cosmopolitan that sex with her boyfriend (John Zambetti, a musician) is “more wonderful and passionate than anything I ever remember because it is built on trust, love, and experience.” Keep us posted!

And now for this week’s Diary …

The Prado Museum is reviewing the descriptions of some 27,000 works of art in its collection and excising terms considered offensive, in compliance with a new Spanish law. One example: the text accompanying Velázquez’s The Boy from Vallecas, a painting depicting a man called Francisco Lezcano, now replaces the word “dwarfism” with its scientific form, “achondroplasia.”

… Meanwhile, visitors to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, a short walk from the Prado, will continue to be able to see Camille Pissarro’s Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, a painting that had been looted by the Nazis. The heirs of the woman who owned the Pissarro—until 1939—have been fighting for years to get it back, but a California federal appeals court “voted unanimously that the museum had no legal obligation” to return it, Euronews reported. The three judges deferred to Spanish law, “which defines ownership as six years of uninterrupted possession,” though one expressed the hope that Spain would nevertheless do the right thing: “Sometimes our oaths of office and an appreciation of our proper roles as appellate judges require that we concur in a result at odds with our moral compass.”

A Greenland company that harvests ice that comes “directly from the natural glaciers in the Arctic … the cleanest H₂O on Earth” and sells it to exclusive bars in the United Arab Emirates for use in cocktails “has been hit with a wave of criticism which has taken the founders by surprise,” said The Guardian. But Arctic Ice claims its ice is “environmentally friendly” (having been gathered after it had already broken away from glaciers) and that the company is committed to establishing a carbon-neutral supply chain. Yeah, well, we’ll still have ours neat.

France’s new education minister hadn’t been on the job 24 hours before she was having to defend sending her three children to private schools. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra justified her decision “because of ‘loads of teaching hours without a serious replacement’ teacher at her son’s public school.” Le Monde reported her saying that she was “‘fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families’ across France.” Maybe so. Except that “[it] appears the storm is set to last.... The newspaper Libération tracked down her eldest son’s teacher, who denied having been absent during the six months that the child attended” the public school.

Most wives in Japan are “dissatisfied” with their husbands’ level of enthusiasm for domestic duties, according to a new study. The South China Morning Post reported that 55.3 percent were “unhappy with the amount of work their husbands did at home … while 15.5 percent said their husbands never cooked, cleaned or took care of the children”—the highest numbers since the study began, three years ago. Among the specific complaints: “He doesn’t unroll his balled-up socks and leaves them on the floor instead of putting them in the washing machine.”

Nunzia Giuliano, an influencer with 15,000 TikTok followers, is marketing a fragrance, O Liò, named after her father—O Liò being short for his nickname, “O Lione” (the Lion). And that father? Carmine Giuliano, who, while “deeply involved in a brutal drug war in the city in the 1980s,” noted The Times of London, was chummy with the late soccer legend turned Neapolitan patron saint Diego Maradona and was “considered by some in Naples as a folk hero who looked after the welfare of poor residents.” Giuliano died in 2004, of natural causes, since you’re wondering. —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