The results of last week’s special Property-Whore Index suggest that even when it comes to mind-numbing real-estate squabbles, competitors with name recognition benefit. Jared Kushner and his plan to develop—sorry, ruin—the beautiful Albanian coastline with a high-end resort ran away with the prize (39.1 percent). The runner-up, with his own plan to develop—sorry, ruin—pristine Florida parkland for pickleball and golf was Ron DeSantis (18.6 percent). People, in other words, who are all too familiar to us. Third place went to Ken Griffin, another Florida ersatz developer (11.1 percent), and Patrice Pastor, who’s been busy buying up chunks of Carmel, California, was fourth (9.9 percent).
But now we return to the Attention Whores, who, by definition, have not exactly been on vacation during the interregnum.
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
DONALD TRUMP
The Republican Party’s standard-bearer flip-flopped on abortion (twice); reposted some particularly vulgar, sexist content; said that God wanted him to win the presidency; told Fox News that he (Trump, not God) had “every right” to interfere with the election; and pushed back after the army rebuked him for staging a crass political photo op at Arlington National Cemetery, bravely passing the buck: “I don’t know what the rules and regulations are, I don’t know who did it, and, I, it could have been them. It could have been the parents. It could have been somebody.... I really don’t know anything about it. All I do is I stood there and I said, ‘If you’d like to have a picture, we can have a picture.’” Incoherent? Not in the least. As Trump explained elsewhere, “I do the weave.... I’ll talk about like nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like—and friends of mine that are like English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
2.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Now suing to have his name removed from certain ballots—North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin—because he fears his presence as a voting option in swing states might hurt his new pal Donald Trump.
3.
ELON MUSK
Would be interested in serving on a “government efficiency commission” in a Trump administration, The Washington Post reported. On X, posted a picture of Vice President Harris in a red Communist uniform with the words “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” (X supposedly doesn’t allow such manipulations.) Reposted an anonymous theory that “people who can’t defend themselves physically (women and low T men)” are “very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus,” and that “this is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making,” to which he appended the note, “Interesting observation.”
4.
THE SUSSEXES
“Operation Bring Harry In from the Cold” was reported by The Daily Mail, the story being that the prince has been consulting old friends on how best to “rehabilitate” himself so he can spend more time in the U.K. and possibly even resume some royal duties. Although—also according to the Daily Mail—“Prince Harry has ‘no interest’ in leaving the United States and returning to royal duties in Britain, sources claim.” What is beyond question is that five months after its launch, his wife’s lifestyle juggernaut American Riviera Orchard hasn’t actually made anything available for sale. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s rejection last week of the brand’s trademark application as being “primarily geographically descriptive” and for (according to the Daily Mail) “giving vague descriptions of her products” didn’t help. Resolvable paperwork issues? Maybe, although there were reports that a name change was being considered. (Nooooo! American Riviera Orchard is such a great cognitive exercise—you have to concentrate to remember it.) The couple earlier ran into problems attempting to trademark Archewell, so this has become a kind of Montecito-royal tradition.
5.
J. D. VANCE
Still out there inflicting himself on the general public. Used a 2007 clip of a Miss Teen USA contestant giving a rambling answer to make a joke about Kamala Harris. Years later, it turns out, the young woman, Caitlin Upton, revealed that she became depressed and suicidal after her answer went viral, but Vance wouldn’t apologize for reviving the clip—after which Upton posted that “it’s a shame that 17 years later this is still being brought up” and that “online bullying needs to stop.” Meanwhile, moving from evil to medieval, Vance’s own past continues to bubble toxically to the surface. There’s the 2021 podcast in which he expressed his belief that women who work “instead of starting a family and having children” will “eventually realize … that that is a path to misery.” And his introduction to, and endorsement of, a 2017 Heritage Foundation report that, as The New York Times put it, “amount[s] to an effort to instruct Americans on what their families should be, when to grow them and the best way to raise their children.”
6.
THE RAMONES
“The Ramones of the Day”? Apart from the delectable pleasure of seeing the words “Ramones” and “intellectual property” in the same sentence, there was only sadness in the New York Times report of the lawsuits flying between Joey Ramone’s brother and Johnny Ramone’s widow, each of whom owns 50 percent of Ramones Productions. (All four of the original Ramones have died.) The survivors are squabbling over a proposed biopic and charges of exploitation of the Ramones’ legacy for personal gain—an unfortunate coda for a glorious, sui generis band. One hopes things don’t devolve to the “I Wanna Be Subpoenaed” stage.
7.
NicolÁs Maduro
Having retained the presidency of Venezuela by wresting the election from the likely winner, opposition leader Edmundo González, and cracked down on his opponents, he declared that “September smells like Christmas!” and that the holiday will begin on October 1 this year. (Last year, Maduro decreed a November 1 Christmas.) The point? Early bonuses and government handouts, presumably. Christmas came early as well for the U.S. government, which seized Maduro’s jet in the Dominican Republic and flew it to Florida, saying it had been purchased illegally and smuggled out of the United States in violation of sanctions laws. —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
