This isnt surprising to me at all. Have you watched Gran Torino? It is basically a window into his soul as a director and an actor.

If Gran Torino was a Facebook account, the human on the other end of that account is Clint Eastwood, in that Facebook profiles show the romanticized and grand perspective that a person wants others to believe about them, but belies enough truth that you can still see hints of the ugly underbelly.

Gran Torino featured a romanticized view of a tortured Korean war veteran who is not appreciated not liked by his family, but through his gruff and angry demeanor befriends a Korean boy in his poor multi cultural neghborhood and saves him from a life of gangs and violence by teaching him the value of hard work and pulling yourself up from bootstraps as the solution to all of lifes problems. Oh and he teaches him that racial slurs are not hurtful and racist and that they are all in good fun and that old white men should get a pass for using hurtful offensive language because it used to be ok.

There was a lot in that movie that really shows the world through the lens that Clint Eastwood sees it. A world abound with racist stereotypes who only need a father figure to lead them to the wealth of boundless opportunities that can easily lift them out of the trappings of poverty that they just needed to be made aware of. Opportunities that Clint doesnt see are increasingly rare in todays world and even more so for non whites and women.