Mandy Patinkin’s Stinking Thinking

Mandy Patinkin is a fine actor who really needs to stick to acting.

At a recent Americans for Peace Now event where he accepted the Rabin Peace Award, he placed blame on the impasse in peace talks on “arrogant” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who he said “just didn’t feel good to me” and “had a bad vibe” when he sat next to him at a Soviet Jewry rally in 1982.

Ok, so he really detests Netanyahu, which makes me think he imagined speaking to him here:

What makes it worse is how he compares arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat favorably to him, intimating he “on occasions” moved the peace process forward, and thinks Fatah joining forces with Hamas is good for peace.

Mandy, please concentrate on your own homeland.

16 thoughts on “Mandy Patinkin’s Stinking Thinking”

  1. Hard Little Machine

    Mandy’s always had extremely silly childlike views. He quit his TV show because he felt doing a show about serial killers was ‘too violent’.

    1. Have you seen the show? More serial killers are featured therein in one season than are identified in the United States in an eight or nine period, the second-in-command character is played by a man aping Jack Lord (forgetting the original overstayed his welcome), and they are continually resorting to a deus ex machina in the form of the resident computer whiz, who can seemingly identify and hack into any database on seconds notice (and is played by a fat dyke).

      Cop dramas and mysteries attempt (with varying degrees of success) to make use of engaging narrative which distracts the viewer from the absurdity of it all (some absurdities manifest to laymen and some only to professionals). The program in question is surprisingly durable given that it finesses that problem rather indifferently. If Pantinkin is well-fixed and has other options, he might have wished to be free of the program just due to a sense of craftsmanship.

      1. Hard Little Machine

        I can only go by what he actually said. He claims he was mislead and that the show turned out to be far more violent than he expected. Of course he also played the Angel of Death (literally) in another show on TV he’s proud of, so go figure.

        1. Strange. The program is not violent. A great deal of dialogue in office settings (and some field settings) twixt and ensemble of supposed FBI agents.

  2. He is a jerk and I never cared for his acting all that much. You would think that the years 2001-2002 would’ve “blown” Peace Now away.

    1. Norman_In_New_York

      The suicide bombers did blow away Israeli Peace Now. Their American counterparts still have their head up their tush.

      1. I used to have access to a database called Polling the Nations. Their inventory included a mess of polls taken on the West Bank and Gaza over the period running from 2003 to 2008. That’s the matrix in which Abbas operates even if he’s not in tune with it. Pretty depressing, even allowing for the difference between revealed preferences and stated preferences and for the difficulties involved in phrasing to acquire illuminating answers. North of a third of the Arab population therein fancies that a solution must include dissolution of the State of Israel. Another 30% are willing to sign an agreement with Israel, but insist that one element which must be included (and non-negotiable) is a franchise for a fuzzily defined category of Arabs to settle in Israel at their own discretion.

        Evidently, the current Secretary of State and Mandy Patinkin do not quite grasp the implications of all that, or cannot bear to grasp them. So, you put the Foreign Service to work in wheel spinning exercises and make silly statements on public platforms.

  3. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who he said “just didn’t feel good to me” and “had a bad vibe” when he sat next to him at a Soviet Jewry rally in 1982.

    Wagers Netanyahu hit on Pantinkin’s wife.

  4. Jim from Iowa

    At least Bibi Netanyahu was democratically elected to his position as leader of Israel. Which is more than you can say for Abbas’ leadership at this point. It is time for new leadership within the Palestinian Authority and with that a possible restart to a negotiated settlement.

    1. Waal, the last election in 2006 resulted in the following: north of 40% for crime syndicate with a history of feints and double dealing (they call themselves “Al Fatah”), about 45% for an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood who do not bother with the double-dealing and make their attitude toward the Jews quite clear, 7% for a collection of communist and fascistoid parties who are not any more agreeably disposed to the Jews than is Hamas, and 5% for a pair of liberalish cut-a-deal-and-done parties. If you had a true interlocutor, it would be these last. You have democracy, and the local Arab rank-and-file tell you what they really think.

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