Many readers and Twitter followers have asked us, “When are you writing about American Sniper?”
Looking at our work on Lone Survivor, it makes sense. Chris Kyle was as conservative--if not more so--than Marcus Lutrell and filled his book with conservative and anti-ROE ideology. American Sniper, both the book and the movie, are huge hits. And, as multiple media outlets have noticed, Chris Kyle had a tendency to make things up, including shooting looters after Hurricane Katrina, killing two men at a gas station, and punching Jesse Ventura in the face. (This last one cost his family’s estate after he lost a defamation court case.)
Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, we didn’t have time to debunk the facts behind the book. We did, though, have barely enough time last week to write up a piece for Slate, titled, “The Surprising History of American Sniper’s “Wolves, Sheep, and Sheepdogs” Speech”. It also allowed us to finally debunk the sheep, sheepdogs and wolves analogy that we’ve hated for years. (This satisfied another request from our readers, who requested that we debunk this pop philosophy.) Since the American Sniper film uses this analogy, it allowed us to discuss both topics in place.
So, head over to Slate and check it out. Expect more on sheep, sheepdogs and wolves in the next few weeks.
A number of people have pointed out that Grossman didn’t invent the analogy, which we wrote in the post.
That said, it was virtually unknown before Grossman started popularizing it. As in, no one was using it.