“Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan" - J.G. Ballard. Brighton, Sussex: Unicorn Bookshop, 1968.“Th

“Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan" - J.G. Ballard. Brighton, Sussex: Unicorn Bookshop, 1968.“The text, divided into seven sections and presented in the style of a scientific paper measuring the psychosexual appeal of Ronald Reagan, followed on from his pieces on Marilyn Monroe, JFK, and Jackie Kennedy from 1966, and continued his dissection of the death drive in America’s increasingly media-saturated celebrity culture (Ballard, like Guy Debord, became aware early on of the increasing mediatisation of news and culture).Both whimsical and prescient, it was written in 1967, not long after Reagan became Governor of California, but thirteen years before his nomination as his party’s candidate for president at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit. It was here, in an attempted spectacle-busting prank, that copies stamped with the seal of the Republican National Committee and with the seemingly-innocuous title, “Official Republican 1980 Presidential Survey”, were distributed by former situationists. Ballard was later told “that it was accepted for what it resembled, a psychological position paper on the candidate’s subliminal appeal, commissioned from some maverick think tank”. -- source link

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