I didn't think it was crashing as such, just blanking out part of the screen when it try's to redraw the desktop, I could be wrong though.

but its not just Pidgin, the exact same behavior is happing in Transmission bit torrent program, seems to be a bug in the desktop tray to me, some programs are unaffected such as Xchat for OS2008.

Also I've notices the transparency for icons in the tray don't seem to function either, leaving a white Box with the icon in it.

Cheers
Rip