It’s a personal tragedy that Tammy Faye has died, but someone else will have to let their mascara run. She and her husband bilked thousands of people, lied lied lied, perpetuated superstitious myths, lived lives of gag-inducing hypocrisy, and wallowed in outrageous self-pity when their empire of corruption crumbled. I’m sorry she lived a wasted and deluded life, but beyond that … good riddance.
It’s a good thing I’m traveling today and will have to miss the sanctimonious, dishonest media accolades.
However, she later became an outspoken gay rights advocate. She did a good job of redeeming herself later in life.
In an interview with CNN’s Larry King earlier this month, an emaciated Messner — still using her trademark makeup — said, “I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I’m going straight to heaven.” Asked if she had any regrets, Messner said: “I don’t think about it, Larry, because it’s a waste of good brain space.”
Good attitude.
Bury the past.
Declare yourself worthy of your fantasy heaven.
An idiot to the last.
Two Words for you losers…. FUCK YOU
That woman was the real deal, she never scammed fucking anyone, she just followed her husband. She wasn’t in on ANY of the wrong doing at PTL…
so, take you stupid assed snide comments and shove them up your fucking ass, ya god damned fucking morons!
Wow, didn’t know that. My opinion of her has just gone up!
er, respectfully, that was 53 words.
I watched her on Larry King (re-broadcast) last night, along with her son and daughter, and ex-husband. They all seemed un-apologetic about their continuing religious beliefs.
It looks like she succeeded in a clearly evolutionary way. She and the Rev. Jim have passed their genes/memes onto the next generation, who will now go out and spread the word. Their son was writing a book as of that date (2000). Maybe it’s out yet? I don’t know, it passed under my radar if it did.
Oh. And Chuckie the P.
Have a happy Sunday. No more Starbucks for you.
More on her relationship and views with gays here.
She gets points for having Falwell as a nemesis, but then the glowing report about her by Deepak Chopra promptly deducts them.
Heya Chuck! Lol! That “just following orders” crap didn’t work for the Nazi Generals either. Poor mister Himmler, poor Tammy Faye…whatever…
I heard Tammy Faye interviewed on NPR some years ago. She did come to embrace the gay community, in a hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner way, after having become something of a gay camp icon. She gets major points for that, but loses some of them for being unapologetic about her and Bakker’s scamming their way to wealth. She insisted that they only had one vacation home, which I think is untrue, and anyway, how many people who were donating to them had no vacation homes at all? I detest any self-proclaimed Christian who uses the faith of others to enrich themselves.
Chuckie The P shows us how the ignorant and credulous express themselves.
Well done, Chuckie!
Chuck the P.
Don’t be so shy, Chuck. Tell us how you really feel.
Should it come to a vote over who delivers the eulogy, I choose Christoper Hitchens over Chuck the Populist.
Did anyone see her when she did a stint on The Surreal Life? She actually came across as kind of a neat person. My opinion of her went up after that, and I’m sorry to hear she’s gone. Especially if she died of colon cancer. That’s a BAD death.
Her departure is only sad for family and friends. I remember the days of her family’s hypocrisy with terrible clarity. She may not have been involved in specific crimes, but she had to have known about the general theft. She and her husband lived in a huge mansion, which had an air-condition dog house. They drove matching Rolls-Royces. They spent money like water – on themselves. And PZ is correct. They cried and whined for sympathy after bilking millions from poor deluded Christians. And so what if she did a little good later in life? It wasn’t enough. Her soppy personality and insipid comments made her an embarrassment to American culture. The big media attention always falls on fools.
Today Hell has gained its first ewok.
Ghandi’s sentiment, “I would have become a Christian but I met so many of them,” is mine as well. Tammy Faye gave Christianity a bad name. Chuckie the P is a fine example of what Ghandi was talking about. If Chuckie the P is an example of a Christian, I’ll stay an atheist, thank you.
My guess is that Hannity won’t rush to do an interview with Christopher Hitchens about Tammy’s passing.
It’s amazing that “I was just following orders” (oh, excuse me, “my husband”) is an excuse for being a venal money-grubbing troll — as if she had no idea where the diamonds and limousines came from? What a crock.
I think she was delusional about a mythical being guiding her life, but after seeing her schmooze with Ron Jeremy on the Surreal Life my opinion of her climbed. She might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but she was nice. As for the Bakkers ripping ordinary people off while living the good life, she wouldn’t be the first person to believe whatever her deceiving spouse told her.
Let me rephrase slightly. I know well-meaning nice people can do a lot of damage. However, unlike Falwell, Tammy Faye wasn’t actively evil. She never peddled hate. Her memory doesn’t deserve to be trashed nearly as much as his does.
What is so reprehensible is Jimbo & Tammy’s conscious bamboozling and stealing from her believing Christian flock. Praising the lord was marketing and working the mumbo jumbo. The two of them are confidence scammers pure and simple. They stole the routinely low wages of believing red neck Christians. Jimbo and Tammy were laughing and spending as they stole food, clothing, and shelter from innocent Christian parents and their children. Who else could they work over?
Let’s not blame the red neck Christians for their childish faith and being taken by such foul bastards preaching Christian love. Only some of us have been lucky enough to see through it and escape. Monster Deepak is still working the spiruality scam.
At least this the news of her death has been mitigating the time spent discussing Bush’s polyps…
and she did seem like a nice person, if a little bit dim.
The death of Tammy Faye and Anna Nicole Smith elicits snide contempt.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/cnn_has_priorities.php
The death of Saddam Hussein elicits solemnity and respect.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/a_measure_of_respect_for_a_tyr.php
A strike in Pakistan (with the primary goal of killing Zawahiri) that unfortunately and almost inevitably kills some affiliated civilians and sought after al-Qaeda bomb-maker Abu Khabab al-Masri provokes righteous outrage. (2008 note: Barack Obama favors more military intervention in that region.)
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/i_suppose_it_would_also_make_s.php
Obviously, nobody believes that Tammy Faye and Anna Nicole are the worst of these. The reactions of this blog to these deaths are widely representative of blogospheric reactions and so serve an illustrative purpose. Whom do we feel sympathy for? Whose passing do we mark with derision and scorn, and whose induces quiet contemplation, perhaps even grudging admiration? Is tawdriness and money-grubbing somehow more rankling than a vicious but worthy foe? (In the case of al-Masri, the indignation was about the civilians, not the hunted figure. But even the most surgical strikes against terrorists often kill several affiliated civilians.)
I can understand anger at Tammy Faye, even after her AIDS work. But I have never seen such an orgy of mockery and scorn for the dead like I saw across the blogosphere when Anna Nicole Smith died. Let’s ask ourselves what she did to us, if anything, to deserve such contempt. Nor was this blog’s reaction to Saddam’s execution particularly unusual among those who held no brief for him. Why Saddam Hussein, killed by his gloating enemies, should deserve any more respect than Mussolini (or Milosevic, croaking in custody) due to the circumstances of his death is another question.
Tammy Faye and Anna Nicole Smith were not killed by people in the name of American dominance. They were just nutty, insignificant people who had milked their 15 minutes of fame (and in Tammy Faye’s case, bilked many poor people out of their money) and then died natural deaths.
Hussein was far, far worse than either of them — no one is arguing that he did greater evil. If he’d died a natural death, I’d say goodbye to the old corpse with a sneer, too. The problem is not that he was vindicated or a lesser evil: it’s that his death was a botched and injust execution. You might notice the important clause in my comment on Hussein: “I don’t think our country did itself any favors with this act”.
Save your complaints for the day I applaud our government taking someone like Tammy Faye out and carrying out a public execution. That’s the day I’ll have more sympathy for a televangelist and decry our government’s actions.
The death of Saddam Hussein elicits solemnity and respect.
That’s a deliberate misrepresentation in service of a false thesis.
Hey, two buck Chuck: the thought of Tammy Faye phucking anyone, whether scamming or not, makes me reach for a bottle of eye bleach. Next time, learn how to place your modifiers correctly. And try using a comma. And maybe less profanity. That would be the decent thing to do. It’s so simple, even a Christian can do it.
Why didn’t Hinn heal her?
That’s a particularly low-quality post from you, Colugo. You gloss over the details of the specific posts and erect strawmen to cast PZ and his commenters in a negative light, which is flagrantly dishonest. It’s disappointing, as you’re usually an intelligent and even insightful commenters, even if wrong.
Re: #3. Nothing stirs the emotions like unrequited love. Ever since you were 16, eh, Chucky? And such turn-the-other-cheek, meek & mild language. Truly an inspiration to all!
Re: #23. My profound disgust was not with Smith, but with the unending media attention caused by her death and subsequent child-custody case. Messner was a self-indulgent dimbulb, but, as has been pointed out, she didn’t preach hate and she did contribute to AIDS awareness.
— CV
I’m no fan of televangelists, and believe their very existence is proof that the human gene pool is being thinned at such a rate that there may be no way to recover, but I agree with Nan, Tammy Faye seemed like a genuinely nice person.
Yes, she was deluded, and yes they stole money, but anyone giving money to a televangelist is a fool, and as the saying goes, “A fool and their money soon part ways.”
Jimmy B. was behind the scam, and I imagine getting caught up in that kind of lifestyle would be pretty easy.
We are human after all, and get distracted by shiny things on occasion.
Of all the televangelists she seemed the most sincere, and the least pernicious.
…
…
Colugo, picture this: You’re strapped into a chute with a big hose leading to your mouth. Down the hose flows predigested pap full of drugs, preservatives, steroids, all sorts of stuff to turn you into a big chunk of fatty meat … which is the sum total of your owners think of you.
You’d be indignant, to say the least.
What you haven’t realized is that this is what a lot of blog reaction is about. The mainstream media, controlled by huge corporations and government, shovels the pap into the hose.
This doesn’t mean ANYBODY here thinks Tammy Faye is the Evil Bitch of the Universe, or that Saddam Hussein was the Favorite Uncle who loves puppies.
What it means is that a lot of us find being strapped into that chute uncomfortable, and worth protesting, in whatever ways we can.
Here’s MSM: Oh, Poor, Poor Tammy Faye, A Good-Hearted, Simple Woman Dying of Cancer, Who Deserves Forgiveness for All Her Past Transgressions, and Besides, She Was Just a Poor Dupe and Her Wicked Husband Was the Real Criminal.
And here’s MSM: Oh, Evil, Evil Saddam Hussein, Who We Know Attacked America on 9/11 Because Our President Said So and We Totally Believe Him, and So This Evil Tyrant Deserves Video-Spectable Death, Which We’re Scandalized By But Which We’re Going to Show You Anyway.
And here’s the blogosphere: Uh, waitasec, a lot of that stuff is not PRECISELY correct. There are these other things worth noting. In fact, maybe there’s a LOT of other things worth noting.
…
…
Nastiness and gloating over a silly woman’s death, aren’t we proud of our ourselves? Enjoy your party.
Well, at the very least, she was a “one of a kind.” How many of us can say that?
Her allure was that she elevated being an emtional train wreck to an art form. She has a unique way of engendering sympathy – ling before the scandals, it was her tears that drew attention to her trademark mascara, always running down her face, always crying for help – and money.
As an icon of 1980’s, she carved a lasting place for herself in the world of celebrity camp, and to her very end, maintained that slightly outrageous public personna.
I have no doubt she was very aware of this.
True to form, her final appearance on Larry King last week, will leave us with another unforgttable image of an icon staying “in role” while facing her end with remarkable grace.
She was certainly an original.
WORD UP DAWG! I’ll take the offer.
Heh, Anna Z, watch what the Xians do when Hitchens dies. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
After all, they’re supposed to be the moral ones.
You pray to your god with that mouth?
So it’s wrong when they do it but not wrong when you do it? My goodness, you’re a closet Bushite.
Tyler DiPietro: “You gloss over the details of the specific posts and erect strawmen to cast PZ and his commenters in a negative light, which is flagrantly dishonest.”
Well, I did write:
“Obviously, nobody believes that Tammy Faye and Anna Nicole are the worst of these.” (Implicitly, including PZ and his commenters.)
“those who held no brief for him.” (Implicitly, including PZ and his commenters.)
And I did link to the posts so nobody would have to depend solely on my encapsulations.
People all over the political spectrum noted, and some were even impressed by, Saddam’s composure during his execution. Well, Milosevic was also steadfast and defiant during his trial. And maybe Charles Taylor will be composed as his sentence is read, or maybe he will hysterically plead for mercy. So what.
I think PZ explained the reactions: the respective commentaries on Saddam and the Pakistan strike (not just at this website, but around the blogosphere) are not so much about the dead as they are about the projection of US power. (Actually, I believe that the nature of Saddam’s execution demonstrated the relative deficit of American influence in Iraq.)
And I think comment #15 explains why there is such post-mortem contempt around the blogosphere for Anna Nicole and Tammy Faye: we’re embarrassed by them.
The Bakkers, and those who invest in their kind of shtick, are typically childlike and childish simpletons, who will continue to Praise The Lord even as he is letting a painful cancer eat them alive.
Anna Z said:
Silly woman? The topic is Tammy Faye, not Lucille Ball. You’re right, if Tammy Faye’s worst offense was “silliness,” then everyone here would be out of line. But since that’s untrue, your sanctimonious objection is worthless.
“Why didn’t Hinn heal her?”
For the same reason Hinn (et. al.) and his god either CAN’T
or WON’T heal amputees….just won’t happen, folks!
There is a video out there from the Canadian Broadcasting
Corp. exposing the Hinn operation (including the use of hidden cameras). From their method of selecting “healees” to be the ones to come up on stage to be “slain in the spirit” by Rev. Benny–anybody obviously sick or crippled is shunted off to the side–to their profligate spending records, the whold sordid mess is there for the world to see. The Hinn operation is demanding that any clip in any way critical of him on YouTube be removed.
Hinn took his cue and obviously learned his trade at the feet of those like Jim&TammyFaye Bakker. Should be a special place down there in the molten core of the Earth for the likes of these.
It was sickening to see her on Larry King. Sickening and pitiful that her last act on earth was to feed her need to be an attention whore.
“Look at me! Look at me! I’m 65 pounds! I’m dying! I’ve got cancer! Look at me! LOOK AT ME!”
The people she most looked forward to meeting in heaven were the televangelist that had gone before her. JEEEEEEsus CHRIST! If I could suspend my disbelief long enough to pretend that we all go to heaven and are given the opportunity to meet the greatest people who ever lived…televangelist? OTHER attention-whore shysters? What a worthless human being. The greatest thing in her life was herself and others like her. Sad and pathetic.
From Chuck the Populist’s blog when trying to comment:
Looks like some troll is lucky PZ believes in free speech. Perhaps, though, we should give Chuck a break, seems he’s from Detroit.
More to the point, why did God punish her? I guess He feels the same way about hypocrites as we do.
Just how many Rolls Royces was she laid in, anyway?
Thanks for the info about the CBC documentary on Benny Hinn. It’s still available online at http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_miracles.html
RE #33:
“Well, at the very least, she was a “one of a kind.” How many of us can say that?”
uuuhhh, all of us that aren’t monozygotic twins?
i’m just sayin’…
No, not at all. But perhaps you should save your scorn for those whose actions in life were dubious at best, and greatly malicious at worst. At the time of her death, she still owed the IRS for taxes unpaid on the money she and her husband(s) bilked from the faithfully gullible.
We don’t celebrate when those who cloak their malignancy in religiousity die, but we do breathe a sigh of relief when despicable people are no longer around to cause wo much injury to others.
“I think PZ explained the reactions: the respective commentaries on Saddam and the Pakistan strike (not just at this website, but around the blogosphere) are not so much about the dead as they are about the projection of US power.”
Which is my point, as well as PZ’s. The contexts were different. I was glad when Augustos Pinochet died, also glad with Slobodan Melosevic died (even though I think the Kosovo intervention was misguided at best). Sadaam’s death was under different circumstances than Tammy Taye’s, comparing PZ’s responses to the two seemed to me to be an attempt impugn PZ. Sorry if I misapprehended you, but it seemed like the point you were making.
Chuck,
She lived a life of luxury on money raised by fraud. She was a crook.
-jcr
Tyler DiPietro:
Your original interpretation wasn’t entirely erroneous; I was making a pointed observation about a common pattern. But I never seek to impugn. Criticize? Sometimes. And hopefully, to provoke reflection. Certainly, my presentation can often stand improvement. Hence, I benefit from the astute criticism of commentators such as yourself.
I think Tammy Faye deserves to scorned about as much as Ken Hovind’s wife deserves to be in prison.
The real shame is that she suffered with cancer for however long, but Falwell just dropped over without making any fuss.
Wow, some of the comments here are at about the 4th grade level at best:
“Today Hell has gained its first ewok.”
“Heh, Anna Z, watch what the Xians do when Hitchens dies. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“Just how many Rolls Royces was she laid in, anyway?”
Zheesh! The circumcision-reduces-the-risk-of-AIDS thread showed me that most people here don’t know how to read a scientific paper, this stuff doesn’t help show that there are smart people here. C’mon people, we’re better than this! Pharyngula is changing and not for the better.
She was just a member of the genus homo, no more, no less. A flawed person not much on reason, just as dead as our ancestors. Good, bad, just as typical, she got media attention while wiser member of our species were ignored. Maybe I should wear mascara. Should I mourn? Perhaps not….
Wow! Even though she tried to do what she could to make up for things, and died HORRIBLY, the atheists are having a good time cackling over her death.
I see no atheist superiority to even the worst fundies.
Perhaps you should withdraw your head from your rectum, then.
I forgot, we’re all supposed to be good Christians here and not speak ill of the dead. I have seen no one “cackling over her death,” but people are expressing how they feel about her. To many people here, she did more harm than good in her life, and her antics made her a laughingstock while she was alive. Nobody is saying they’re happy she’s dead, nor is anyone pleased she had terminal cancer. So maybe you should get off your high horses already, before you fall off and give us all something to really laugh at.
Look, I hate televangelists as much as the next intelligent person. I have followed the careers of Jim & Tammy as well as most of the other crackpots and charlatans for 25 years. But after seeing quite a few interviews with Tammy in the last 5 or so years, I’m going to have to throttle down my scorncaster for this one.
This kind of thing is why the Catholics invented purgatory.
To properly judge Tammy Faye you have to take into account the context in which she grew up. The same courtesy you’d afford an underpriveleged youth at a sentencing hearing. She was a product of a culture that values big hair, overdone make-up. The preacher’s wife is expected to be naive and as unquestioning of their husband as they are to their saviour.
She was never a “businesswoman”. I really don’t think she was evil in a calculating sort of way. Certainly not like Jim or Falwell or Robertson or a zillion other bamboozlers. She played her role and trusted her husband and her lord that everything was on the up and up. Kind of a voluntarily induced Stockholm syndrome.
Was she self-delusional? Of course. Christians have a particularly developed capacity for self delusion. It comes with the territory. But Tammy saw herself in a role that she believed would naturally result in the kind of lifestyle she lived. She saw nothing strange or suspicious about it. There’s even a name for it but I forget. Something like “Prosperity gospel”. The idea being that material wealth is a manifestation of god’s approval. The idea of the corollary being true is not as widely held nowadays. But I wouldn’t be suprised if it never occured to her that fraud would be necessary to maintain their lavish lifestyles.
Had she been Catholic or Episcopalian or something, perhaps she would have looked for a non-divine source for her wealth. But I think she was brought up to seriously believe that cash flow was a sort of “Seal of Approval” used by God to countenance one’s actions.
She deserves a certain measure of scorn for her failure to question those to whom she submitted herself, and for the consequences of her blind faith. But then, all Xtians do. But I don’t believe she was intentionally dishonest and probably no more greedy than the average surgeon’s wife.
She was never a hatemonger, but judging by everything I’ve know of her since the string of misfortunes visited upon her after PTL, (she did not die wealthy), she was a more empathetic person and had learned a great deal of tolerance and especially humility. I’ve little doubt that, given another 20 years, she would have redeemed herself.
“Wow! Even though she tried to do what she could to make up for things, and died HORRIBLY, the atheists are having a good time cackling over her death.
I see no atheist superiority to even the worst fundies.”
Not ALL atheists. Tammy is getting a lot less cackling than … say… Madeline Murray, the very mention of whose name elicits villification by a whole chorus of cacklin’ fundies.
There was just something manic about her. She was always crying on the PTL show. She needed medication. She was worse than Jan Crouch who recently talked about Tammy Faye on her show. They had some sort of contact with her recently. Looks like Tammy Faye was trying to cover all bases.
Is it true that they are going to donate her make-up trowel to the Smithsonian?
I neither revel in her death nor feel sad about it. She was a flawed but nice human. People with the same qualities die every day. I agree that we should not scorn her in her death but we should not celebrate her life either. The way she died is HORRIBLE but so being tortured and beheaded as so many are killed by other religious fanatics. Perhaps if her fundie friends and their pet president would stop their bullshit with stem cell research she may have lived a much longer life. In a way her religion is what killed her and I feel no pity for that.
In #15 MarcusA says, “She may not have been involved in specific crimes, but she had to have known about the general theft.” And the subject came up a few more times in the thread.
Consider this dilemma. From a Senior Common Room discussion at a women’s college in a 30s mystery novel, when a former porter at the college (named Jukes, no less!) has been arrested for thievery worse than that for which he’d been sacked earlier by the college:
‘I do hope Mrs Jukes isn’t involved,’ said the Bursar.
‘Surely not,’ cried Miss Lydgate, ‘she’s such a nice woman.’
‘She must have known about it,’ said Harriet, ‘unless she’s a perfect imbecile.’
‘What a dreadful thing, to know your husband was a thief!’
‘Yes,’ said the Dean, ‘it would be very uncomfortable to have to live on the proceeds.’
‘Terrible,’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘I can’t imagine anything more dreadful to an honest person’s feelings.’
‘Then,’ said Harriet, ‘for Mrs Jukes’ sake, we must hope she was as guilty as he was.’
‘What a horrbile hope!’ exclaimed Miss Lydgate.
‘Well, she’s got to be either guilty or unhappy’…
[Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers, 1935]
A blessing for Tammy Faye that she was not too bright: who would want her to die believing she’d have to defend herself in a disputation over this issue before her Maker?
I’m going to echo and amplify Pete’s comment. She did not come from a sane or rational background, she came from southern evangelical la-la land one of the stupidest places on earth, and I would like to point out that she made a firm decision in life and left it. Give her not just the benefit of the doubt for her background but the credit for the things she did and the miles she put between herself and her life’s vulgarity.
When it became obvious Jim Baker was full of bullsh$t and hypocrisy she LEFT him and never apologized for respecting herself by that action. She didn’t go into absurd ugly serial monogamy, she was not some evil dominionist christian wanting to take over and subvert America, she became a strong willed and independent woman, the kind of person who makes those dominionists sick.
She survived her first round of cancer and became active fighting it and inspiring others. One of the truism’s she was raised on is that the lord helps those who help themselves, she did that and then went on to help others. Yes, when she died still believed in and affirmed things you find non-sensical but she was also even in her last days trying to affirm Love and Hope to others. It could seem manipulative but perhaps you can see her professing something much better than just belief in god, you can see her professing a belief in people.
It’s hard to watch her final interviews with Larry King, it’s painful but you might want to do it PZ to keep yourself in touch with what it means to be human, cause the misdirected venom in this treatment of Tammy Faye make me worry you’ve lost touch with all that.
I never understood how her mascara ran when it was tattooed on.
Curtis,it’s eyeliner that you can get tattoed,but not mascara,since mascara is brushed onto the eyelashes,not applied onto the skin.And this is more profound a suject than the topic of this thread.
“affiliated civilians”, hmmm, very nice.
My buddy Calladus offers a thoughtful obituary to Tammi Faye right here. It’s worth reading.
Why do we always assume the spouse isn’t in on it? Is it an assumption that women aren’t capable of evil? How do we know that the scam wasn’t her idea and her dolt of a husband was set up to take the fall?
I’ve never doubted for a second that she was actively in on the whole scam thing, and got off without the punishment she deserved. She was evil through and through.
That she was smart enough to try to make good after the whole thing doesn’t whitewash the past.
She was a scam artist. Plus her voice could induce seizures and her face could cause nightmares. However, dying from cancer like that, is a horrible way to go. I don’t revel in her death at all.
It’s not wrong when anyone does it.
The death of someone does not require that everyone else get all syrupy. It’s a fact that no matter who dies, someone, somewhere, will think the world is a better place for it.
ANS was the embodiment of everything we love to hate. She was a talentless hack who sucked and fucked her way to fame. She was the archetype of gold-diggers. She was proof that looks triumph over substance, a walking monument to all that is vain and shallow in western culture. She was the living ugliness in our society. Everyone could look at her and say “dammit, have we really come to that?”
That’s why she got the contempt. She probably deserved it, although we, collectively, only have ourselves to blame for the fact that she could live that way.
Wait until Paris Hilton kicks off.
What did she do to deserve our respect? Die? Hell, any damn fool can do that. Death is neither a reason to hold our tongues nor an excuse to overlook the whitewashing of decades of crimes.
Would we make the same excuses for a racial hate-mongerer because he was brought up by bigots? I don’t think her religious background should excuse her actions (or her religious beliefs).
Having said all that, she did come a long way and even outgrew her religion a little bit in demonstrating compassion and empathy for people very different . Imagine who she could have been without the ball and chain of religion to hold her back for so long.
If anything, I think Tammy Faye is a perfect example of the pernicious effect of religion on individuals.
No tears shed by me for this totally phony
religious bigot PTL = Pass The Loot
Her and Jims motto,”throw all the money
in the air, what stays up is for god,what
comes down is for us”!!!!
Thanks Scott. There’s a lot of mourning in the LGBT community over Tammy Faye’s death. From my point of view there are not many public Christian leaders who can convince a drag queen that they honestly love and care about them. Tammy did.
Don’t get me wrong, she had a lot of faults – but I can forgive much because of how she treated the gay community. And she taught her kids that sort of acceptance too. Her son, Jay Bakker, is a liberal minister who advocates same sex marriage. (He gets a lot of flack for that.) I think he got that sort of acceptance from Tammy Faye.
Tammy Faye was easy to laugh at, and she did a lot of things wrong. But I can respect the things she did good.
Note to self: sell stocks in mascara, false eyelashes.
It’s just too bad she was so difficult to caricature,
being such a good caricature of herself to begin with.
Tammy Faye divorced and remarried. If the Bible is right, that means she ain’t getting through the Pearly Gates.
Yes, divorce is prohibited in most cases, but Tammy Faye had a loophole. Jim committed adultery when he raped Jessica Hahn, therefore divorce was allowed.
That doesn’t mean that I think she’s in Heaven now. However, I will say that she’s probably in the same condition as Jerry Falwell and Henry Morris.
The fact that some religious folk use the Bible as a list of ‘shalts’ and ‘shalt-nots’ is interesting, but only has a modest bearing on what happens after we die, in that people can speculate, perhaps even tongue-in-cheek, about our ultimate destination.
What does happen? By faith, we can declare that we will be no more, or, as some believers do, that we will experience more than we could possibly know in this short life. Whatever her fate, it is a journey that all of us will make, sooner or later, and this should give us pause. What, I wonder, will they say about us when we are gone?
I wrote: “Had she been Catholic or Episcopalian or something, perhaps she would have looked for a non-divine source for her wealth. But I think she was brought up to seriously believe that cash flow was a sort of “Seal of Approval” used by God to countenance one’s actions.”
You wrote: Would we make the same excuses for a racial hate-mongerer because he was brought up by bigots? I don’t think her religious background should excuse her actions (or her religious beliefs)….
I don’t excuse anything because it’s done in or because of a religious belief. Except a certain amount of naivete and ignorance.
My point was not to excuse wrongdoing. I don’t believe it occured to her that Jim or his business partners were doing anything wrong. In fact, by their constantly begging for money, they were doing nothing more than about a million preachers do every Sunday from behind a million pulpits. In fact, nowadays there are mega-churches that probably collect the kind of dough Jim and Tammy could only dream of.
Is it wrong to beg for money to support a ministry or a church, or a preacher and his family? Leaving aside my own personal animosity toward religion in general, I’d have to say no. That’s the way organized religion works. Regarding their opulent lifestyle; they didn’t hide it. Their viewers were treated to videos of their gold plated bathroom fixtures and such. And their supporters just kept on giving. This is not unlike the preacher in the local low-income neighborhood. He likely has the best house around, if he lives nearby at all, and his flock is delighted that he drives a Cadillac and takes vacations to the holy land, even though they can’t even afford an old Chevy and vacation at home.
The PTL club was more an entertainment show than a religious service. They never told their viewers to give them money so it would be multiplied, or bring them god’s grace, or any of those forms of extortion. It was a sappy, non-political, make-believe world. Like Branson Mo., except on T.V. The people that gave money to them did it because they enjoyed the entertainment. Like my donating to PBS.
Jim was paid a salary that was determined by a Board of Directors. Just like a CEO. Up until he began overselling time shares, the money he solicited was used for the causes he said it would be used for. He said he was going to build Heritage Village. He did it. Actually, most of the fraud and theft was committed by his hangers on like Larry Dortch and a few others less notorious than Jim. But the buck stopped at Jim and that’s how it should be. He succumbed to the big bucks and turned into a crook. There’s no evidence Tammy did.
I would not argue that she was incapable of being in on a scam. I am not inclined to take her innocence for granted merely because she was a wife, as another poster implied. I will argue that there was no evidence of her involvement in anything illegal. Believe me, the prosecutors didn’t refrain from charging her with anything because they liked her singing. The fact is that the nature of the crimes involved were such that it is quite reasonable to believe that she was kept basically in the dark. In fact, there were crimes going on that even Jim didn’t know about. The whole saga involved more crooks than Jim and Tammy but no one remembers their names.
I can’t believe I’m coming off as a defender of Tammy, but there it is. It’s very unfair to lump her in with the likes of Falwell, Robertson, et. al. In fact, had Jim and Tammy not been politically liberal they would have been defended and protected by the xtian right wing. But they wouldn’t preach hate, fire and brimstone. They wouldn’t get behind repub politics, and they wouldn’t publicly judge people. So the majority of the televangelist community turned on them like a bleeding chick.
I was glad when Jim was sent up, even though it deprived me of a source of late night laughs. And I did a little grave dancing for Falwell. But I followed this pair for a long time. And I know what Tammy has done since PTL. Believe me when I tell you, as obnoxious as they both were, they were not the same species of xtian. Especially Tammy.
I cannot hold Tammy responsible for her husband’s fraud any more than I can hold Laura Bush responsible for George’s fraud. Or the wives of the CEO’s of Dow or Monsanto. Is Ken Lay or Andy Fastow’s wife in jail? In a strict, traditional xtian household the husband is the boss and not to be second-guessed or vetoed. So it’s easy for him to engage in all sorts of sins and crimes without the assistance or knowledge of his wife. Combine that dominant/submissive paradigm with a sizeable financial empire and you have created an evironment where this sort of thing is almost inevitable. The worst that can be said about Tammy, other than her persona, is that she was terrible at picking men.
Another thing. I believe you can tell a lot about a person from the kids they raise. Other than the fact that he’s a xtian, I have heard nothing but good things about their son; even from the hardest-core xtian haters on DemocraticUndergrounddotcom. And I’ve yet to hear anyone who’s seen the movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” come away with a low opinion of her.
I have no use for evangelists of any stripe. But I’ll leave my dancing shoes on the shelf for this one.
“Hinn took his cue and obviously learned his trade at the feet of those like Jim&TammyFaye Bakker. Should be a special place down there in the molten core of the Earth for the likes of these.”
No, you’re wrong. The Bakkers were never into faith healing, at least what I saw of them. The PTL club was more like a xtian Regis & Kathy Lee show. Benny Hinn, Earnest Angely, Swaggart, Oral Roberts, etc. would never have a thing to do with them. They were not politically conservative, or fundamentalist enough.
Thanks for your clarification, Pete. I see what you’re getting at, and I’m inclined to agree with you. I suppose I wouldn’t question such weath either if I were brought up to accept it as normal or some reward for good faith.
I was only around ten when the whole Jim and Tammy Bakker fiasco went down, so I don’t know much about her at the time. I do remember seeing her on The Surreal Life a few times though and generally finding her likeable and unexpectedly tolerant.
Anyway, this whole discussion has been very interesting, and I’m glad I’ve been exposed to some of the complexity behind this often-caricatured individual.
I’ve little doubt that, given another 20 years, she would have redeemed herself.
I suspect you may be right on in this, Pete.
So many low-rent, pos atheists, so little time.
I saw a clip of Tammy Faye on Larry King and it prompted me to add a few more death-bed instructions to my kids.
In Tammy’s honor, today, I watched “Marjoe” on my iPod on a cross-country flight. Thanks for reminding me, Tammy!
Tammy Faye lovers, did you ever hear her “Ballad of Jim and Tammy Faye?” doesn’t sound like an innocent dupe to me. She and Jim both lived the high life. Then when the deal went down, basically because he’s “the man” he did hard time, and she skated and even got to keep what was left of the loot. OH BOO HOO HOO.
She ripped off the wonderful Jeannie C. Riley, whose spiked heels Tammy Faye was not fit to shine with her lying tongue. The entire “song” is whining about the fact that Jerry Falwell was a smarter crook than her and Jim. “Let’s send Falwell back to Lynchburg and rebuild our “Heritage USA” (scam).”
With perhaps a million or two people sending money they could ill afford to these two pharoahs, they still went into receivership and a hostile takeover by Jerry Falwell, himself a fuckup who only survived as a satrap to Sun Myung Moon.
You know who SHOULD mourn her most? Atheists. Or at least non- and/or anti-Christians. Fortunately, there are a horde of new humbugs where Jim and Tammy came from. They’re like a cross between Paris Hilton and Elmer Gantry. If you threw a rock out your window at random, you’d hit a neighbor who’s a more worthwhile person in every way than this pond-scum couple. The cult of celebrity, along with television, is reducing us to judgmentless imbeciles as a (Western) culture.
I note that it’s hard to find The Ballad of Jim and Tammy, so I just listened to it and transcribed it.
The audio is here http://franklarosa.com/vinyl/Exhibit.jsp?AlbumID=57
Wiki’s not bad on this (jim bakker entry):
I have explained and EXPLAINED why God does NOT heal amputees.
If people regrew their limbs, fallen humanity would start praying to the Lizard God.
pardon my paranoia. mere cosmic cowinky dink that TFBM shows up on LKL on thursday and is dead by friday? dr. jack is a free man these days. maybe he came outta of retirement one last time to pay TFBM a quick, quiet visit.