The Bad Shepherd by Mark D. Tooley
"Having apparently exhausted real-life targets, the Religious Left is now lashing out at a fictional movie character who supposedly embodies ugly American attitudes of chauvinism and imperialism.
Speaking to hundreds of left-wing religious activists at an “Ecumenical Advocacy Days” rally this month outside Washington, D.C., United Methodist lobbyist Jim Winkler targeted the Matt Damon character in “The Good Shepherd,” directed by Robert DeNiro.
Damon portrays a fictionalized James Jesus Angleton, the long-time chief of counterintelligence at CIA. In the Damon characterization, Angleton is the ultimate repressed and dutiful WASP, who diligently serves his country by fighting Nazis for the OSS during World War II, and then working against the communists for the CIA during the Cold War. The Damon character is an emotional cold-fish, who channels all his energies into defending America.
As a “good shepherd’ watching over his flock, the Damon character defends America’s interests by overthrowing an unspecified leftist regime in Latin America, obviously based on the 1954 coup in Guatemala, and he organizes the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Like the real-life Angleton, the Damon character is also obsessed with a possible Soviet penetration of the Agency.
Winkler found in the Damon-Angleton character the embodiment of American imperialism. “We are battling three myths: the myth of white supremacy, the myth of male superiority, and the myth of American exceptionalism,” Winkler explained. The latter is “an incredibly dangerous myth,” which has “led us into debacle after debacle.”"
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