While the recently departed Norman Mailer is best known as a novelist, back in the day he was a preeminent political commentator. (And a career misogynist, which most obit writers failed to note, but that’s another matter.)

Anyhow, in a lengthy article for Esquire magazine titled “The Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” Mailer riffs on celebrity marketing in postwar American politics not as a so-called objective journalist but with an edgy point of view that occasionally resembles that of a pugilist, which he was in his youth.

The celebrity in this case was John F. Kennedy, whom Mailer saw as being short on policy but long on image. He noted that JFK’s glamor and marketability made his nomination at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles an all-but-foregone conclusion.

Get beyond Mailer’s dense prose and appreciate the excerpts posted at Kiko’s House for their prescience. Better still, read the entire article.