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.
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Pre-empted a New Yorker profile of him by releasing a video in which he casually told Roseanne Barr that, yes, he had once driven a dead bear cub from upstate New York to Central Park and left it there under a bicycle. He’d meant to skin it, he explained, but had a plane to catch. No college prank: this happened when Kennedy was 60. (Bonus points: the New Yorker article included a photo of Kennedy “putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face,” as Clare Malone reported. Extra bonus points: the discovery of the cub’s carcass was originally reported in The New York Times in 2014 by Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Kennedy’s cousin Caroline.)
2.
CLARENCE THOMAS
Everyone’s favorite freeloading Supreme Court justice was accused of having accepted yet another flight on the conservative donor Harlan Crow’s private jet. This one was a round trip for Thomas and his election-denying wife, Ginni, between Hawaii and New Zealand in 2010. So what’s the big deal? Another month, another revelation of a dubious, undeclared gift for the perennially aggrieved, ethically challenged, but utterly uncompromisable Thomas.
3.
ELON MUSK
Democracy at work: X’s A.I. chatbot, Grok, sent millions of users false information suggesting that Kamala Harris was ineligible to appear on the presidential ballot. A PAC backed by the tiresome billionaire and Trump flack is under investigation in Michigan for possibly violating state laws when it offered Web-site visitors a chance to “register to vote”—and then, when they did, gathered detailed personal information about them. And he even managed to get into a squabble with the U.K.’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, after posting on X that after days of rioting, “civil war is inevitable” in Britain.
4.
DONALD TRUMP
Flip-flopped like a beached orange whale before agreeing to debate Harris, while continuing to mispronounce her name (that joke never gets old!)—but not before he got to see the phrase “Trump is a coward” trending … on Truth Social, his own vanity social-media network. Went to Georgia, a state he needs to win, and proceeded to attack and mock its Republican governor. While there, also addressed the critical political issue that’s on every American’s mind: the size of Kamala Harris’s crowds as compared to his. And, ever the patriot, Trump reacted to the complex prisoner swap President Biden pulled off by finding fault with it and congratulating Vladimir Putin. Just as tellingly, he never even mentioned the three American citizens who’d survived the ordeal, or how he felt about their being freed, etc. You know, human stuff.
5.
J. D. VANCE
Went further than his boss regarding the prisoner swap on CNN, making it clear that the person who in fact deserves credit for freeing them is none other than—surprise!—his boss: “We have to ask ourselves, why are they coming home? And I think it’s because bad guys all over the world recognize Donald Trump’s about to be back in office, so they’re cleaning house.... I think it’s a testament to Donald Trump’s strength.” Bad guys everywhere, you’ve been warned.
6.
HARRY AND MEGHAN
Making tentative inroads back to our collective consciousness. The couple went on CBS to help launch the Parents’ Network, to combat online bullying. Laudable. But outside of that, they inspired eye-rolling and snark: “Harry and Meghan Won’t Visit Britain Because of ‘Security Fears’ … but Their Next Trip Is to Crime-Ridden Colombia,” went a Daily Mail headline. And People reported that once again the couple has not been invited to the traditional late-summer gathering of Windsors at Balmoral. “While Prince Harry grew up going to Balmoral, it’s believed that Meghan has never visited the royal family’s Scottish castle,” said the magazine. Randomly drew the wrath of Eric Trump, who told GB News, “You can happily have those two back. We’ll happily send them back from America, you can have them back over here.”
7.
THE DOW
To start the week, the compulsively attention-getting stock market dropped 1,000 points on Monday morning, reflecting similarly tanking markets around the world. Come on, we’re still having our coffee!
8.
Tim Walz
Being vice president is actually a terrible way to get any attention at all. But running for the position—that will get you plenty. Example: Walz had been an announced candidate for only a few hours before, in time-honored political fashion, he got Swift Boated, with the New York Post dredging up and exaggerating a 2018 complaint from a couple of vets that “Walz retired from his 24-year tenure in the National Guard after learning that his battalion would be deployed to Iraq.” On the other hand: bone spurs. Those things kept Trump out of serving 24 years in the National Guard, and lots more. —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
