Jullian Assange: Blofeld or Bond?

Here's a great article from Salon thinking about the Wikileaks affair in comparison to the James Bond narrative:

The Bond universe's "the government is always looking out for us" conceit is a big part of what made the stories so staggeringly profitable. By inventing fabulously wealthy and powerful outsider foes whose destabilizing force rivaled that of governments, Bond's masters -- original author Ian Fleming and his posthumous replacements, the Broccoli family of producers that have controlled the film series since the '60s -- freed the stories of specifics that might stop residents of any nation from feeling that Bond wasn't on their side. As flamboyantly and shamelessly entertaining as Bond stories often are, they're ultimately ads for the unquestioned authority of the state over the individual. No hero backed by the full faith and credit of the entire Western world could ever be considered an underdog, yet that's how Bond is presented, and we buy it because the stories are clever, amusing power fantasies with smatterings of sex and luxury. When Matt Damon, star of the "Bourne" franchise, called Bond "an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people," he pissed off a lot of Bond fans, but he wasn't wrong. He was cutting to the heart of the myth and insisting fans admit what Bond really was: an emblem of authoritarian power and male entitlement, transformed by movie magic, star glamour, and narrative deck-stacking into an underdog hero that even a powerless, penniless wage slave could root for.