The Attention-Whore Index

This week’s results provide a useful reminder that the Attention-Whore Index is not necessarily an unpopularity poll, or a comeuppance for those with chronic neediness. There are instances where calling attention to people who are calling attention to themselves shouldn’t automatically be taken as a reproach.

For example, our current polling has the moon—the moon!—in second place, at 18.5 percent (tied with Elon Musk). Who doesn’t like the moon? Yet one can’t ignore the fact that as gestures go, eclipsing the sun for a couple of hours smacks of more than a little look at me me me.

Still, such benign attention-seekers remain a minority. The moon might have eclipsed the sun, but that doesn’t happen often, and it was itself essentially eclipsed by the perennial top dog, Donald Trump (29.6 percent). And last week Trump wasn’t even in the dock yet.

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

1.

DONALD TRUMP

Now he’s in the dock. The self-styled “Modern Day Nelson Mandela” became the first U.S. president to go on trial in a criminal case. He has called the trial “unprecedented.” He also announced that he will “tell the truth”—which certainly fits our definition of unprecedented. Apparently fell asleep on the first day (though he was probably just being “sarcastic.”) Continued to rant (“This conflicted, Trump Hating judge won’t let me respond to people that are on TV lying and spewing hate all day long.... RIGGED, UNCONSTITUTIONAL TRIAL!”) and sift for cash: “In a letter received by Republican digital vendors this week, the Trump campaign is asking for down-ballot candidates who use his name, image and likeness in fundraising appeals to give at least 5 percent of the proceeds to the campaign,” Politico reported.

2.

LIZ TRUSS

Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister’s would-be comeback continues with her memoir, Ten Years to Save the West. Among the highlights: the advice Truss got, and ignored, from Queen Elizabeth (“Pace yourself”); her reaction to the Queen’s death (“Why me? Why now?”); and how she passed much of her brief residency at 10 Downing Street (“The place was infested with fleas. Some claimed that this was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.”). Unsurprisingly, the raves are in. From The Times of London: “She is physically incapable of self-reflection or awareness of any sort.”

3.

O. J. SIMPSON

Him again.

4.

THE EXTENDED SUSSEX CLAN

Reportedly, Riviera America … no, that can’t be right. Orchard-American Riviera? Well, whatever—it’s imminent. In fact, the first jar of strawberry jam has gone out to friends and influencers in a numbered, limited edition of 50, while the rest of the world awaits the lifestyle launch with the kind of anticipation not seen since the run-up to Ten Years to Save the West. And, in the wake of the duke and duchess’s Netflix deal, which includes a polo-related project, the couple (and Netflix) went to South Florida for a polo match. Harry’s team won, Meghan presented him with a trophy and a kiss, and, most importantly, the cameras got it all. Oh, and the duchess’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr., posted a bizarre, 87-minute video on YouTube in which he impersonated her—in a wig and tiara—and announced, “My name’s Me-again Swamp-donkey Crotch. I was just showing off the new bump I bought used on eBay out of Montecito.” (The siblings are estranged.)

5.

ELON MUSK

After dropping to fourth place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the bad news continued for Musk. Tesla, following a bad quarter for sales, announced it would “reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally”—meaning roughly 14,000 people. And NBC News reported that X is “a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime,” host to “at least 150 paid ‘Premium’ subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts [that] have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules.”

6.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE

Continued to defend Putin (“Vladimir Putin has not said he wants to go march across Europe and take Europe, and the reality is Ukraine is not even a NATO member nation”). Mike Johnson is another matter entirely. Greene is still hell-bent on uprooting him from his post, despite Trump’s support for the Speaker. (“I think he’s doing a very good job, about as good as you’re going to do. I’m sure that Marjorie understands that.”) Well, who needs Trump, anyway? This week Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, announced he would co-sponsor Greene’s “motion to vacate” the beleaguered Johnson.

7.

BOB MENENDEZ

The bribery-trial-bound senator proposed in song to his bribery-trial-bound girlfriend, Nadine, in front of the Taj Mahal in 2020, and based on a brief filed by his lawyers, he might be singing again. “According to the newly unsealed section of the brief, Mr. Menendez may testify at his trial and, if he does, he would disclose communications with Ms. Menendez that would ‘tend to exonerate’ him but may incriminate his wife,” The New York Times reported. That magical day in 2018 when the couple first met at a Union City IHOP, and sparks flew amid the melts and pancakes, feels far away …

And now for this week’s Diary …

Two 1,700-year-old wells in this ancient Chinese town have offered up to archeologists a collection of tax records, in the form of 10,000 bamboo slips including “information about household registration, taxation, farming, mining and other economic activities,” reported the South China Morning Post. “The artefacts found in central China’s Hunan province are a series of bureaucratic updates about how [Dutou] operated day to day.... The discovery of the slips should illuminate how the region was governed.” Another example of why it’s important to heed your accountant and save those receipts.

The Winklevii, whose $65 million payout from Mark Zuckerberg— after they sued him over the creation of Facebook—helped launch their crypto-currency careers, are getting into soccer. “The billionaire bitcoin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have become co-owners of a semi-professional football team that plays in the ninth tier of the English league system,” reported The Telegraph. The twins are investing $4.5 million in Bitcoin for a 45 percent stake in Real Bedford, of the Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division. The club’s average attendance is 440, said the newspaper, and “Cameron Winklevoss said the brothers had bought into the club because ‘it has the makings of a great underdog story.’”

There’s no white Bronco involved, but the live-streamed murder trial of a former Kazakhstani minister charged in the death of his wife has “made for compulsive, if often harrowing, viewing … for millions of Kazakhs,” reported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Quandyq Bishimbaev, 43, once a rising political star, was appointed economy minister in 2016 but was arrested within months for corruption. And pardoned. He then got married for the third time, to Saltanat Nukenova, 31, and it’s she he’s accused of beating to death in a restaurant here last year. “Security camera footage from the November 9 incident … shows Bishimbaev grabbing Nukenova by the hair, then punching and kicking her. He admitted there was even more violence in the bathroom, where there were no cameras.... His position remains that he ‘caused her death’ but did not intend it.”

This island near Sicily is home to 600 wild goats, which have proliferated from a handful that escaped 20 years ago—and which have increasingly been throwing their weight around, damaging walls and frightening the outnumbered human population, of 120. Hunting is banned on the three-square-mile island—what to do? “The goats are being offered free to applicants” who agree to “bring a truck on the regular ferry and promise to whisk them off Alicudi for good,” reported The Times of London. It might work. Said one official: “We got 25 requests this week, including someone in Belgium who wants just one goat. Now we need to start rounding them up.” —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