Never underestimate the power of arctophilia (the love of bears): Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was propelled to the very top of the Attention-Whore Index last week on the strength of a doomed bear cub he crossed paths with 10 years ago. (His predictably bizarre explanation regarding what was already a macabre story certainly helped.) Kennedy (26.9 percent) edged out the incredible deflating Donald Trump (26.1 percent), whose mini-me minion J. D. Vance placed third (13.7 percent), slightly ahead of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (12.4 percent).
Speaking of whom, it will be interesting to see whether everyone’s favorite quasi-royal, Anglo-American, Montecito-based power couple can parlay what amounts to a soft reopening within this competition into something that has the staying power of (for instance) a long-dead bear.
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
ELON MUSK
Congenitally incapable of lying low, the irksome misinformation disseminator sued the Global Alliance for Responsible Media over its boycott of X, after which the nonprofit group was forced to “discontinue its activities.” Had a “fireside chat” with cadets at the United States Military Academy. Had a fire-sale, glitch-rich chat with Donald Trump on X.
2.
J. D. VANCE
Still Donald Trump’s running mate, at press time. Vance’s well-documented past continues to haunt him, notably the working conditions at AppHarvest, the eastern Kentucky indoor-agriculture company he backed—early investor, board member, cheerleader—and which declared bankruptcy last year (Vance was no longer on the board but remained an investor.) CNN reported that “temperatures often soared into the triple digits” and “workers alleged they were given insufficient water breaks and weren’t provided adequate safety gear,” while Grist revealed that photographers “were told not to take pictures of the contract workers, most of whom were Hispanic, because the company wanted to show it was employing Appalachians, who are largely white.”
3.
DONALD TRUMP
Still J. D. Vance’s running mate, at press time. The increasingly reality-challenged candidate’s first news-conference performance, Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times, was “like a blender going at full speed with the top off, goop splattering everywhere.” At a second one, he tried and failed to stay on-topic (the economy): “I’m very angry at [Harris].... It was a coup by people that wanted him out, and they didn’t do it the way, not the way they’re supposed to do it. $129 more on energy, and $241 more. This is all per month on rent.” Whined that photos of Harris’s crowds in Detroit were “AI-doctored,” a claim even Trump-friendly news outlets quickly debunked. Fabricated a near-fatal helicopter ride with Willie Brown and doubled down on it, after which it emerged that Trump had probably confused another Black politician with Brown. Almost as awkward: at a rally, blasted the theme from Titanic—a curious choice for a sinking campaign—and subsequently incurred the wrath of its singer, Celine Dion.
4.
UKRAINE
Hello? Hello? What with American-presidential politics and the Middle East and the Olympics, what do we have to do to regain your attention—invade Russia or something?
5.
THE SUSSEXES
Their chief of staff quit after three months on the job—reportedly the 18th staff departure in six years—just before the couple began a four-day tour of Colombia at the invitation of that nation’s vice president, about which one Bogotá lawyer told the Daily Mail, “I’m sure Meghan and Harry mean well, but everyone here is talking about how obviously they are being manipulated.... The reality is the Colombian government has been drowning in scandal since it came in two years ago. They need something to appease people at home and make them look good abroad.” Meanwhile, it was reported that the Sussexes’ brief visit to Vancouver in February cost the city more than $44,000 in police overtime, three-quarters of which was footed by taxpayers.
6.
GAVIN NEWSOM
Vancouver’s taxpayers have it easy compared to California’s, whose governor keeps a personal photographer—with a salary ($200,000) almost as high as his own—on hand to capture his every aviator-glasses-wearing, bejeaned moment. Charles Ommanney, a retired photojournalist and war photographer, is there when Newsom is clearing homeless encampments or picking up trash, Politico reported, and as “director of photography” is “among the top earners in the Newsom administration, according to the state controller’s office.”
7.
Katy Perry
Spain is investigating the singer’s production company for having filmed her “Lifetimes” music video in a protected area. Perry spends a good part of the clip cavorting among the dunes on the islet of S’Espalmador in the Balearic Islands—you’ll recognize her, she’s the one who seems incapable of lowering her arms. While she has in the past spoken out about the environmental impact of the fashion industry, she hasn’t so far spoken out regarding the investigation, and in fact was recently seen escaping the reality of two consecutive flop singles cruising on Jeff Bezos’s carbon-emissions-spewing yacht—7,000 tons of greenhouse gasses per year. (This was just before that eternally low-key couple met with Pope Francis at the Vatican and posted the photographic evidence on Instagram.)
8.
Mark Zuckerberg
“Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife,” the Facebook billionaire announced in an Instagram post, along with a photo of his wife, Priscilla Chan, standing next to the Daniel Arsham statue he had commissioned of her, sipping coffee. Well, Chan is; the seven-foot blue statue, with billowing silver metallic cloak, is in mid-stride. “It seems to borrow from the Winged Victory of Samothrace, exhibited at The Louvre in Paris,” thought The Times of London, although it seemed to borrow just as much from the Avatar film franchise, exhibited at your local AMC. —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
