Donald Trump put a decisive end to several straight weeks of feeble Attention Whore performances with a whopping 53.1 percent of your votes. Being declared a convicted felon 34 times over will do that. Martha-Ann Alito finished a distant second, though there have been weeks where her 19.6 percent would have put her solidly in contention. Bad timing!
So where to from here? The pundits are certain the presidential campaign has changed; the pundits are also certain it hasn’t. We’ll go out on a limb and declare that the Attention-Whore Index has either been utterly upended, or not. Because it doesn’t matter what any of us thinks: this week, and also on November 5, it’s up to the voters.
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
HUNTER BIDEN
The president’s feckless son—or as the Republicans will try hard to make you believe, the president himself—went on trial in Wilmington, Delaware, on charges that he lied about his drug use to purchase a handgun in 2018. September will bring another Hunter Biden trial, for tax evasion.
2.
MADONNA
Sued by a fan for having subjected him to “pornography without warning” at her March show in Los Angeles—you know, “topless women on stage simulating sex acts,” that sort of thing. More disturbingly, she’s also accused of having had the A/C turned off, and of being late. “Forcing consumers to wait hours in hot, uncomfortable arenas and subjecting them to pornography without warning is demonstrative of Madonna’s flippant disrespect for her fans,” Justen Lipeles charged in the lawsuit, to which no dollar figure has yet been publicly attached. (Anyway, who can put a price on such “emotional distress”?) Note: Madonna has been sued by fans for late concert starts before.
3.
ERIC ADAMS
New York’s fun-loving, rat-hating mayor was ticketed—for the fifth time since becoming mayor—for rat infestation at his Brooklyn row house. Adams, who is generously on the record regarding his rodent antipathy (“There’s NOTHING I hate more than rats”), who announced the first National Urban Rat Summit would be held in September, and who last year appointed a “rat czar” to preside over their “wholesale slaughter,” was handed his latest violation when an inspector observed fresh rat droppings and a burrow “at the front left base of the staircase of the property,” said the Associated Press. The mayor, who now lives in Gracie Mansion, can appeal. His first three citations were dismissed, and Adams paid a $300 fine for the fourth.
4.
JENNIFER LOPEZ
On the strength of a controversial $6.3 million payday for a single performance in Dubai, J.Lo placed third in an A.W.I. in February. That was accompanied by some ferocious, self-absorbed attention-grabbing: a new album (This Is Me … Now), a “visual album” (This Is Me … Now: A Love Story), and a documentary (The Greatest Love Story Never Told), largely self-financed; the documentary reportedly cost her $20 million. Now the fallout: all the projects were commercial and critical disappointments, she’s canceled her summer tour (supposedly because of poor tickets sales), her marriage to Ben Affleck is rumored to be over, and her $1 million–per–show Las Vegas residency, as yet unannounced for 2025, may never be announced: it’s said to be “in jeopardy.” Even J.Lo’s only recent hit, the science-fiction film Atlas, on Netflix, was roundly panned. Rough year. And it’s only June.
5.
DONALD TRUMP
For the self-described “very innocent” felon, it was back to business as usual. Lied, strenuously and at length, in his rambling post-verdict remarks. Said that witnesses were “literally crucified,” an alarming visual we don’t recall having seen in any of the courtroom sketches. In a curious tactical move, called Justice Merchan, who will hand down his sentence next month, “a devil.” Concluded, with his newfound perspective, that imprisoning Hillary Clinton “would have been a terrible thing” and then lied by claiming that he’d never said, “Lock her up”—it was just those goofy fans of his! Relaxed by taking in an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New Jersey. Finally, as the historian Heather Cox Richardson noted, “On Saturday, an image circulated on social media of Trump leaving Trump Tower and waving as if to a crowd, but there was no one there.”
6.
THE ENABLERS
They all (Republican politicians, MAGA faithful, billionaire donors) fell predictably into line: The trial, which should never have occurred, was a sham! Rigged! Political! A witch hunt! When Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland, had the temerity to suggest that the public should “respect the verdict and the legal process,” he was immediately eviscerated—notably by Lara Trump, the R.N.C. co-chair/daughter-in-law, who told CNN, “I don’t support what he just said there. I think it’s ridiculous.” Her brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr. observed, performing a clever imitation of his father, “The Democrats have succeeded in their years-long attempt to turn America into a third-world shithole.” Online, Trump supporters explicitly threatened violence against the judge, the jurors, and the district attorney. And not just them. One reported post: “1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to [W]ashington and hang everyone. That’s the only solution.”
7.
TUCKER CARLSON
The ever more irrelevant Carlson deserves to be separated from the herd and acknowledged. His reaction: “Import the Third World, become the Third World. That’s what we just saw. This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first.... Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.”
8.
Rishi Sunak
Britain’s tone-deaf prime minister left the D-day commemorations in France early, skipping a ceremony at Omaha Beach to do a TV interview back in London. His opponent in the upcoming elections, Labour’s Keir Starmer, did attend. “On reflection, that was a mistake and I apologize,” said Sunak of his early departure. Then he warned that “it’s important … that we don’t politicize this.” We’re sure no one would dream of it. —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
