For a week it was all about a certain Right Ear, but now the entire Republican ticket—all four ears; the beard; the eye makeup and the orange spray; the whole mendacious, delusional, disagreeable package—once again holds sway at the top of the Attention-Whore Index. Donald Trump (33.3 percent) won on the strength of a) implying that “my beautiful Christians” had a democracy-free, theocratic future to look forward to if they would vote for him “just this time,” and b) his self-immolation before the National Association of Black Journalists—you remember, that interview he “CRUSHED.” J. D. Vance (31.8 percent) polled nearly as high because, as the historian Heather Cox Richardson put it, he “continues to step on rakes,” particularly in his strange, apparently long-standing obsession with childlessness.
Paris (as in the Olympics) was a distant third (10.8 percent), just ahead of Elon Musk and Nicolás Maduro. Fine competitors all, but they’re running with a fast crowd that’s not only adept at stepping on rakes but skilled at knowing where to locate them and then stomping down hard.
