Having briefly staked out significant Attention-Whore turf on the strength of his achievements in the field of Putin lapdoggery, Tucker Carlson suddenly found himself coming up short with new transgressions, thus leaving the A.W.I. field open for a familiar very stable genius to lumber ahead. Hence: Donald Trump, 39.4 percent; Bianca Censori, 23.1 percent; Marjorie Taylor Greene, 12.5 percent. Welcome to the competition, Ms. Censori, and welcome back, Ms. Greene—we expect to hear lots more from both of you. And a tip of the hat to February, whose greedy claim to an additional day earned the month a fourth-place finish (9.4 percent).
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
PRINCE ANDREW
With much of Britain’s royal family on the injured list, it fell to Charles’s feckless brother, Andrew, along with his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, to lead the way at a service for the late King Constantine of Greece at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. But the photos and videos of a jaunty Andrew unaccountably grinning—he was on his way to a memorial—didn’t play very well. “What an appalling and shameful picture … a disgraced Prince Andrew striding ahead of the others with his galumphing ex-wife, Fergie, a few steps behind,” said the Daily Mail.
2.
MUKESH AMBANI
The world’s ninth-richest person ($117 billion) threw a low-key pre-wedding bash for his son Anant, and Anant’s fiancée, Radhika Merchant, in Jamnagar, India. Represented among the 1,200 guests were Silicon Valley’s billionaire class (Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates), India’s V.I.P. class (cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan), and America’s repugnant class (Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner). Entertainment was provided by Rihanna and the magician David Blaine; food, by 100 chefs creating 500 dishes. Ambani, the C.E.O. of Reliance Industries, also had 14 new temples constructed for the three-day event, but no new hotels—guests had to make do with glamping and, indeed, with roughing it in unimaginable ways. “According to a planning document provided to invitees,” Reuters reported, guests were “asked to be reasonable in their expectations for laundry services,” and warned that clothes given out for pressing “will be returned within 3 hours.... Expecting or requesting anything quicker than that may not be feasible.” With luck, the amenities will have improved considerably at the July wedding, in Mumbai.
3.
DONALD TRUMP JR.
On his podcast—yes, he has one—Donald Trump’s spawn picked up on his father’s Black-people-like-me-because-of-my-criminal-indictments theme. “I travel all over the country,” said Trump Jr. “I fly commercial. I have seen and witnessed, now more than ever, the amount of African-American men that have come up to me, literally like, ‘Hey, man, you’re my hero.’” His father’s supporters, meanwhile, have been generating A.I. images of a smiling Trump Sr. interposed (as he might put it) in the midst of groups of Black people—also smiling—and then disseminating the fake photos in an effort, presumably, to show that the candidate is every bit as popular in that community as his hero son.
4.
DONALD TRUMP
And yet: none of that faux bonhomie was enough to prevent Trump Sr. from confusing Barack Obama and Joe Biden publicly for the eighth time in recent months. But—needless to say—it’s all intentional. “You take a look at when I use Barack Hussein Obama and I interject him into where it’s supposed to be Biden, and I do it purposely for comedic reasons and for sarcasm,” he explained. The Supreme Court–endorsed candidate won big on Super Tuesday. “We left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful equipment behind [in Afghanistan]. Jets and tanks and everything you can think of. Goggles. Night goggles,” he said, clearly in a celebratory mood. “And now the worst things are happening. The things that are happening now are unthinkable.... Our cities are choking to death. Our states are dying. And, frankly, our country is dying.... Thank you very much. It’s been a big night. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
5.
EMILY DICKINSON
The great poet was the opposite of an Attention Whore—at least during her lifetime—but 138 years after her death, that assessment might need to be re-evaluated. News comes that Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather and Taylor Swift’s ninth great-grandfather were the same person. “Both … are descended from a 17th-century English immigrant, according to an Ancestry report commissioned by NBC’s Today show,” said The Times of London, making Swift and Dickinson sixth cousins, three times removed. This posthumous spotlight-grab by Dickinson is perhaps unsurprising from a writer who published only 10 poems while she was alive.
6.
NIKKI HALEY
Won primaries in Washington, D.C., and Vermont. Lost everything else, withdrew from race, declined to endorse Trump. Candidate-in-waiting, perhaps?
7.
JOE BIDEN
Got the best sort of attention with his State of the Union speech. Trump called it “the Angriest, Least Compassionate, and Worst State of the Union Speech ever made. It was an Embarrassment to our Country!”—no higher praise. And, in her bizarre, tone-deaf Republican response, the Alabama senator Katie Britt, who must have missed Biden’s speech, described the president as “dithering and diminished.” (Her rebuttal, however, was in Trump’s view “a GREAT contrast to an Angry, and obviously very Disturbed, ‘President.’”)
8.
GARY GOLDSMITH
The Princess of Wales’s uncle—brother of Carole Middleton, Kate’s mother—is suddenly very available for comment, most notably on the reality-TV show Celebrity Big Brother. Regarding his niece: “She’s getting the best care in the world and all the family has done is put the wagons around and look after family.” Regarding himself: “I often read that people think I’m a bit of a bad boy. It’d be lovely to put the record straight, but winding people up is probably my favorite hobby. I’m an absolute nightmare to live with. There’s a reason I’ve had four wives.” And regarding the Sussexes (because why not?): “I genuinely think their titles should be taken away.” Thomas Markle is going to have to step up his game. —George Kalogerakis
George Kalogerakis, a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL, worked at 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
