Before anyone foresaw a time when a television celebrity could become president, Norman Mailer wrote in Esquire that John F. Kennedy was a mythical hero who could finally unite the business of politics with the business of stardom. His legendary 1960 reported essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermart,” about J.F.K. and the Democratic political convention, changed the rules for how we understand our political candidates as brands, and how we’re allowed to write about them. Mailer archivist and biographer J. Michael Lennon joins host David Brancaccio to discuss Mailer’s legacy, what his essay wrought, and how it continues to ripple through our political culture and be proven prescient again and again.
