The Attention-Whore Index

It took the combined sartorial transgressions of 450 party-goers to beat out Kristi Noem and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Attention Whore honors last week. The Met Gala easily topped the voting, with 37.5 percent. Noem, surfing the low-to-the-ground crest of her memoir, polled second (19.8 percent). Elaborately muscled worm host Kennedy was third (18.7 percent).

And Donald Trump? Lagging, for the second consecutive week, his measly 11.1 percent good for only fourth place. Maybe that judicial gag order, even sporadically observed, cramped his style. Or maybe it’s a sign that Trump Fatigue—ours, not the kind that puts him to sleep in court—has now entered the Trump Exhaustion phase, bordering on Trump Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Who wants four years with someone who can enervate us in just four seconds?

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

1.

THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

Before joining Meghan for an official trip to Nigeria (“My country,” said the “43 percent Nigerian” duchess), Harry spent three days in London, where he put up at a hotel, either because his father, the King, didn’t invite him over or because he had been invited but declined the offer. Charles apparently didn’t ask Harry to a Buckingham Palace garden party, and Harry didn’t ask Charles to an Invictus Games event—unless, as was also speculated, he did, and Charles simply didn’t attend. All of this, observers concluded, left one or both parties feeling sorry. Or relieved. And us feeling Windsor Fatigue. (California’s attorney general was feeling a little Windsor Fatigue as well. According to the New York Post’s Page Six, he declared Harry and Meghan’s Archewell charity foundation delinquent because they’d let their registration fees lapse.)

2.

JOHNNY M_cENTEE

The former Trump White House aide and likely member of a hypothetical second Trump administration posted a TikTok video, shared by the right-wing dating app the Right Stuff, in which he said: “So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car. So when a homeless person asks for money, then I give them like a fake $5 bill. So I feel good about myself. They feel good. And then when they go to use it, they get arrested. So I’m actually, like, helping clean up the community, you know, getting them off the street.”

3.

Harrison Butker

The Kansas City Chiefs kicker gave the commencement speech at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, telling the women among the graduates that “some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” and that the “most important title” they should aspire to is “homemaker.” No comment yet from Chiefs super-fan, and shy, retiring homemaker, Taylor Swift. Nor from Butker’s own mother, Elizabeth Keller Butker, an accomplished medical physicist.

4.

Barnard College Parents

While student protests were expected at Barnard College’s commencement ceremony, held earlier this week at Radio City Music Hall, the biggest disruption came from an unexpected source. Some parents booed graduating students who wore Palestinian colors, while others unveiled a large “Parents for Palestine” flag from the balcony. One student speaker, who calmly advocated for Israel and Palestine, was shouted at by both groups. On the plus side, it’s surely a sign that campus protests are nearly over when your embarrassing parents want in on them, too.

5.

DONALD TRUMP

Had a break from his full-time job as criminal defendant to cool his be-bone-spurred heels at the Jersey Shore and take in a rally. “Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? ‘Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner,’ as this poor doctor walked by. ‘I’m about to have a friend for dinner.’ But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.” That is outpolling Biden.

6.

J. D. VANCE

In the recurring category of shameless toadying for the honor of being Donald Trump’s running mate, Tim Scott got off to an early lead, saying on NBC’s Meet the Press, in response to a question about whether he would accept the results of the coming election, that “at the end of the day, the 47th president will be Donald Trump.” (Take that, democracy!) But Vance drew even, mouthing the predictable spineless Republican caveat about election results to CNN (“If we have a free and fair election, I will accept the results”), and then shot past Scott by turning up at Trump’s trial in New York.

7.

KRISTI NOEM

The trigger-happy erstwhile contender for that V.P. slot, who invented a meeting with Kim Jong Un in her memoir, is getting some more free fact-checking, this time from the government of France. In her book, Noem writes, “While in Paris, I was slated to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron. However, the day before we were to meet he made what I considered a very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press. So, I decided to cancel.” But NBC News reported that “[a] representative from the Élysée Palace disputed Noem’s account, saying there’s no record of a scheduled meeting, nor was there an invitation extended to her.” Maybe they’ll fix it for the paperback. Or perhaps her dog ate the research.

8.

BOB MENENDEZ

Another high-profile trial got underway in Manhattan, the defendant the Senate’s best-known gold-bullion collector. As expected, Menendez is attempting to avoid a bribery conviction by throwing his wife, Nadine—who is being treated for breast cancer and will be tried separately, in July—under a bus. “He did not know of the gold bars that existed in that closet,” his lawyer said—the couple had “separate lives” and “separate finances.” Well, it’s likely they do now.

9.

Samuel Alito

Speaking of blaming your spouse, the right-wing hatchet justice of the Supreme Court, and perennial lemon-sucking champ, was quick to leap to his wife’s offense when it was revealed that an upside-down American flag flew for several days over the justice’s front lawn following the storming of the Capitol in 2021. “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito told The New York Times about the inverted flag—a common signifier among “Stop the Steal” Trump supporters—“It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” Judicial experts declared the flag a clear violation of the Supreme Court’s rules on political impartiality. Coincidentally, Alito and his colleagues are soon to rule on whether Trump has immunity from being tried for inciting the events of January 6.

And now for this week’s Diary …

The wild-boar nuisance in Italy is nothing new: an estimated million or more of them roam freely through rural and urban areas alike. But now, the Financial Times reported, the government will deploy 177 soldiers to reduce the boars’ numbers “by up to 80 per cent in five years in an attempt to prevent the spread of African swine fever”—presumably because the disease “has alarmed officials and food executives in places such as Parma, the northern city that is the hub of Italy’s renowned cured ham industry.” So the swine have finally crossed a line by putting in jeopardy the nation’s supply of prosciutto.

Over at the “When Art Meets Psychoanalysis” exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Gustave Courbet’s 1866 painting L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), “which notoriously depicts the exposed vulva and torso of a woman whose face remains out of view, was one of five works spray-painted with the phrase ‘MeToo,’” according to Artforum. (The Courbet was under protective glass and wasn’t damaged.) Another piece, Annette Messager’s Je Pense Donc Je Suce (I Think Therefore I Suck) was stolen. The performance artist–photographer Deborah De Robertis claimed to be behind the operation, which she called “You Don’t Separate the Woman from the Artist.” Nevertheless, two women were separated from their freedom—arrested for having wielded the spray paint that also tagged, evenhandedly enough, a photograph by De Robertis.

To help sell President Joko Widodo’s plan to move Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to a brand-new city, authorities have been courting influencers in this social-media-mad country to talk up Nusantara, still under construction, as “livable and desirable,” reported the tech publication Rest of World. “Nusantara will be the smartest and most eco-friendly city in the world!” one influencer with three million followers gushed on TikTok. “It will be 65% forest and 25% urban area.” (And 10 percent … vegetable oil?) But the city-in-progress is controversial—there are in fact environmental concerns—and, besides, as Rest of World noted, “not many commenters seem keen to move to the new capital” themselves.

A Finnish hairdresser has begun offering silent appointments for customers who would rather not have their salon visits filled with chitchat, and “demand for the option … has proved buoyant,” reported The Times of London. “I’m an introvert myself and I understand how uncomfortable it can be for a client to have to make small talk,” said Kati Hakomeri, who usually works alone—which also eliminates any risk of unwanted overheard conversations. —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