The Attention-Whore Index

It must have been the craven Bible-peddling. Unless it was the crowing about winning trophies at his own golf club? However he did it, Donald Trump got 30 percent of your vote to win the latest Attention-Whore Index competition. Next came the F.B.I.-attention-getter formerly known as Sean Combs, 17.9 percent; Jared Kushner, the romantic dreamer who looks at Gaza and sees a luxurious coastal resort, 15 percent; Marjorie Taylor Greene, for another grim week spent being Marjorie Taylor Greene, 13 percent; and the Halley’s Comet of on-air political analysts, Ronna McDaniel, 11.1 percent.

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

1.

PRINCE ANDREW

Given that he’s the star (in the form of Rufus Sewell) of the just-released Netflix film Scoop, a “dramatization” of that train-wreck 2019 BBC interview the royal family would love to forget, it’s no surprise the Duke of York chose to lie low in the days before the premiere. Hence: CASH-STRAPPED PRINCE ANDREW IS SPOTTED HAVING LUNCH AT A FANCY PRIVATE MEMBERS’ CLUB IN MAYFAIR (Daily Mail); PRINCE ANDREW ENJOYS HORSE-RIDING AROUND WINDSOR CASTLE (Daily Mail); PRINCE ANDREW AND SARAH FERGUSON MAKE SURPRISE EASTER APPEARANCE (GB News).

2.

KIM KARDASHIAN

Was sued by the (Donald) Judd Foundation for promulgating “cheap knockoffs” of the late artist’s work. “The basis of the suit is a 2022 video Kardashian posted to YouTube,” said CNN. “While touting her office’s minimalist design, Kardashian specifically praises a sleek, large-scale wooden table with a set of matching chairs that are perfectly sized to slide beneath.... ‘These Donald Judd tables are really amazing and totally blend in with the seats,’ Kardashian says, moving a chair out to show the camera.” The Judd Foundation says the pieces are, alas, not authentic. Brutal(ist)!

3.

THREE TOTALLY RANDOM REPUBLICANS

First Matt Maddock, a state representative from Michigan, reporting from Detroit’s Metro Airport. “Happening right now,” he posted on X, along with a couple of photos. “Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” (The “illegal invaders” were the Gonzaga University basketball team.) Next, Brian Pritchard, the convicted felon (check forgery) and first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, “who pushed false claims that the 2020 election was ‘stolen,’” according to The Washington Post, “was found to have voted illegally nine times, a judge ruled.” Finally, Tim Walberg, a House member from Michigan (again), offered these thoughts on Gaza: “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.”

4.

J. K. ROWLING AND/OR SCOTLAND

The expanded Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred,” had just taken effect last week when the novelist posted, “Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.... If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.” So it’s on.

5.

DONALD TRUMP

On Good Friday, posted a video of a hog-tied President Biden in the back of a truck. On Easter Sunday, churned out 77 posts on Truth Social. On Monday, his social-media company, Trump Media Technology Group, posted a net loss of $58.2 million on revenue of $4.1 million in 2023, and its stock nosedived. Stepped up the violent rhetoric, attracted more judicial gag orders, all the while remaining as coherent as ever: “You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season.… We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”

6.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On CNN, more clear thinking from the conspiracy-party candidate: “I think that is a threat to democracy, [Trump] overthrowing—trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy. But the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy? And what I would say is … I’m not going to answer that question. But I can argue that President Biden is, because the First Amendment … is the most important. I’m not going to defend President Trump on that, and it was appalling. And there’s many things that President Trump has done that are appalling.”

7.

Tucker Carlson

The Putin apologist/scourge of the elite claimed he was banned from speaking at his prep school alma mater—where he also sent his three children—because he was deemed “too dangerous” and “people could be killed,” reported the Daily Mail. “Video of Carlson talking to a group of students from St. George’s School on Zoom was posted on X, as he told them about the lengthy ordeal he had to go through in order to speak to them.” In a letter to the school community, the administration wrote, “After careful consideration, the school leadership decided that a virtual conversation between Mr. Carlson and interested students was the best way to honor the invitation and ensure campus safety.... We are disappointed that Mr. Carlson chose to record and share the Zoom discussion. The students deserved to know in advance if that was the plan.”

And now for this week’s Diary …

Auf Wiedersehen? (Or maybe that should be Arf Wienersehen?) The archetypally German dachshund might cease to exist in Germany if a proposed new law is passed that “would ban breeds with traits deemed pathological, such as spinal problems associated with the long back and short legs of the dachshund,” according to The Times of London. The German Kennel Club is circulating a petition against the law and warns that “other short-legged breeds such as the beagle and Jack Russell could also be banned.”

It remains to be seen whether expensive timepieces can bring down a government, but authorities raided the home of Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, as well as the governmental palace, the week after they’d begun investigating whether Boluarte “has enriched herself illegally after she wore what appeared to be Rolex watches in public,” Bloomberg News reported. Boluarte promised to “clarify” the watch issue and said, “I am an honest woman. I came to the government’s palace with empty hands and that is how I will leave in 2026.” That’s fine about the hands, but the issue here seems, specifically, to be wrists.

Oh, let’s just order in. More than half of the 2,000 government-subsidized community canteens for seniors in this city in eastern China have closed, the South China Morning Post reported. The elderly in cities all across China, it seems, would rather eat at home. “Li Qing, 75, a retiree in Shandong, said he appreciated the ‘good intentions’ behind the canteens, but he and his wife preferred to cook at home as they suffered from arthritis and found it difficult to walk to the dining hall,” said the newspaper. Li added that they’d found the canteen food “cheap and good,” but it’s just easier to have meals “delivered to our doorstep via food delivery apps.”

A woman in this town near Manchester, England, found what she believed was an injured baby hedgehog on the pavement, cared for it through the night, and in the morning took it to the local animal hospital “in a box meticulously lined with newspaper and even placed a small dish of food next to it, as she remained by its bedside,” according to the Daily Mail. The hospital manager, upon opening the box, determined that the “hedgehog” was in fact a fluffy gray hat bobble—a member, in other words, not of the Erinaceidae but rather the Accessorae family. “She was very sweet, bless her, her heart was in the right place,” the manager said. “She took the box from me and left quite quickly.” —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