Our winner last week was Donald Trump’s Right Ear. Hands down—or lobes down?—with 45 percent of the vote. Which makes us wonder: Given that the desperately needy subhuman attached to that ear wins this competition more than anyone—he may no longer have a choke hold on the presidency, but he still does on the Attention-Whore Index—maybe we should divvy him up? Donald Trump’s Hair could be a candidate some appropriate week, Donald Trump’s Short Fingers another, and so forth.
In any case, the Ear was followed by Lauren Boebert (18.7 percent) and Kamala Harris (18.1 percent). We were surprised at quixotic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson’s poor showing (2.3 percent). That doesn’t augur well for her chances in November.
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
THE MURDOCHS
There were intriguing reports of an ugly family squabble over money and influence. The Roys—sorry, Murdochs—are at it because, revealed The New York Times, Rupert Murdoch last year “made a surprise move to change the terms of the Murdochs’ irrevocable family trust to ensure that his eldest son and chosen successor, Lachlan, would remain in charge of his vast collection of television networks and newspapers.” That would diminish the influence, upon Murdoch’s demise, of his other three, more “politically moderate” children. Who, being chips off the old block, are fighting back.
2.
NICOLÁS MADURO
Even though exit polling suggested that Venezuela’s opposition candidate, Edmundo González, had received twice as many votes as the authoritarian incumbent, President Maduro’s electoral council nevertheless declared him the winner, with 51 percent. Many Venezuelans, and much of the world, have challenged the results, which would give Maduro, whose name appeared on the ballot 13 times and who has tampered with elections in the past, six more years in office. Meanwhile, stung by Elon Musk’s accusation of electoral fraud, Maduro challenged the ever meddling billionaire: “Do you want to fight? Let’s do it. Elon Musk, I’m ready. I’m not afraid of you, Elon Musk. Let’s fight, wherever you want.”
3.
Elon Musk
Accepted Maduro’s challenge to a fight. Endorsed Trump. Posted a manipulated, fake video of Kamala Harris. Was called “cold” and “narcissistic” by his estranged transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson, after he’d earlier told an interviewer that he’d been “tricked” into approving gender-affirming care for her and that she was now “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
4.
Fred Trump III
The former president’s nephew was at one time close to his uncle, but he probably is no longer, now that he’s published All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, in which his uncle is portrayed as a voluble racist who also suggested that some disabled people, including his own grandnephew—Fred’s son—“should just die.” If only this were all hard to believe.
5.
THE WINDSORS
Royal rumblings from various quarters. Prince Harry said that his litigation against British tabloids was “a central piece” to the fraying of his relationship with the royal family, and also that it was “still dangerous” for him to bring Meghan back to England. This lack of security did not deter her from flying to Long Island for a female-founders summit. Meanwhile, the royal family as a lucrative conglomerate is doing just fine: Crown Estate profits from 2023 to 2024 more than doubled, to $1.4 billion, from the previous year, primarily from leasing seabed sites to offshore-wind-energy producers. If their tastes don’t change, they’re going to need it: a state dinner for King Charles III at Versailles last September broke French president Emmanuel Macron’s budget with its $515,000 tab. Couldn’t Charles have shared an appetizer?
6.
J. D. VANCE
Still Trump’s running mate, at press time. Even as he was ineptly handling the fallout from “childless cat ladies,” a 2020 podcast emerged in which he said that “the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don’t have kids at home,” and then there was the 2021 video where he reveals that “the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults.… You see the obsessive, weird, almost humiliating, aggressive posture of our media and you wonder how could these people possibly be so miserable and unhappy. Well, the answer is because they don’t have any kids.” Aggressive, check. Weird, check. And—especially—obsessive, check.
7.
DONALD TRUMP
Still Vance’s running mate, at press time. For some reason, the felon appeared to want to wriggle out of debating his Democratic opponent, the former prosecutor. Continued to articulate his vision for America’s future: “Lyin’ Kamala is also a total radical on a word called imbo—you know this right?—a word called, what? Abortion,” he said, apparently flummoxed by a teleprompter, or possibly his frontal lobe. Praised the attendees at a Bitcoin conference for being “high IQ individuals” and then added that he had an uncle who taught at M.I. T. And said, at a religious conference: “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” Asserted that Kamala Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” (she’s married to one) and, before the National Association of Black Journalists, questioned Harris’s racial identity—“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago until she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.” (His assessment of how the interview went: “The questions were Rude and Nasty.… but we CRUSHED IT!”)
8.
PARIS
Sure, the coverage is still treacly and the “U.S.A.!” chants are profoundly tiresome. Plus, there was the (admitted) Canadian spying-by-drone soccer scandal, the (denied) Chinese swimming-doping scandal, the (undeniable) man-bun atop Michael Phelps, and—let’s not forget, though we’d like to—that rather strange opening ceremony. And yet: it’s the Olympics! —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
