When approached by an Iowa rancher about Native American issues, specifically disappointment about President Clinton’s failure to pardon Leonard Peltier and the poor conditions on Iowa’s Native American reservations, Thompson gave a pat, aw-shucks response:
Seeming a little overwhelmed by the breadth of the man's concerns, Thompson responded by saying he'd "look into" it: "You've raised my consciousness level on some things that I'll look into,” he said. “I can't give you a lot of answers to what you're talking about in old treaties and Leonard Peltier."
One little problem. As Michelle Cottle at TNR’s The Plank notes:
And, not to pick on poor ol' Fred, but I would expect him to have a smidge more info and be able to wing it better than most seeing as how he appeared in "Thunderheart," the 1992 fictionalized account of Peltier's saga.
Wait! Do we think this somehow means that Thompson's acting background doesn't qualify to run the country?! Next thing you're going to tell me is that Val Kilmer isn't fit to be head of the FBI.
Hilarious.
GOP apologists (cough*coughBillHobbscough*cough) note that Thompson appears briefly in the film, and it’s not an actual Peltier biopic. But for crying out loud, Thompson also appeared in Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, and much more recently, too. That experience didn’t give him a modicum of understanding of Native American frustration with the U.S. government? No background on the Treaty of Fort Laramie?
I guess, as Kleinheider noted, Thompson isn’t “a method actor.”
