With Donald Trump now gleefully egging on his supporters when they scream, “Sieg Heil!” as security roughs up protesters, Ted Cruz embarrassing himself by reciting quotes from The Princess Bride seems positively quaint. All the same, Mandy Patinkin isn’t having it.
Cruz, a human jar of mayonnaise who is starting to overtake Trump in the Iowa polls, has evidently been doing his Princess Bride schtick for years, occasionally trotting it out on the campaign trail. The quotes, which he attempts to do in the actual character voices, represent just one of several cringeworthy pop-culture impressions in Cruz’s repertoire, a pastime that is presumably responsible for countless clenched jaws and cluster headaches among his advisers.
Taking note of this, The New York Times spoke with Patinkin, who famously played vengeful swordsman Inigo Montoya in the movie. Echoing a sentiment we all remember feeling toward that one LARPer in our freshman dorm, Patinkin wants Cruz to cool it with the Princess Bride quotes already. Patinkin, who is also troubled by Photoshop jobs that transplant Cruz’s signature smirk-grimace onto Inigo Montoya’s body (like ours above), explains:
“I would like to be with Senator Cruz for a moment and I would like to respectfully ask him, since he quotes all the lines from The Princess Bride and certainly all of my character, Inigo Montoya’s, lines, I would like to know why he doesn’t quote my favorite line?”
[…]
“After the princess flies out the window and falls into Andre the Giant’s arms,” Mr. Patinkin said, “Inigo says to the Man in Black, ‘I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.’”
[…]
Mr. Cruz, in Mr. Patinkin’s heavily left-leaning worldview, is trafficking in the revenge business, appealing to anxious voters by saying of the Islamic State, “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion,” and by exploiting fears about immigrants and Muslims.
“Senator Cruz, if you’re going to say those lines, you’ve got to say the other line, too,” Mr. Patinkin said.
Sounding increasingly vexed, he added: “This man is not putting forth ideas that are at the heart of what that movie is all about. I would love for Senator Cruz, and everyone creating fear mongering and hatred, to consider creating hope, optimism and love. Open your arms to these people, these refugees trying to get into our country, and open your hearts.”