Tammy Faye Messner (1942-2007)
As someone with strong (and sometimes too strong) opinions about people, I was surprised at how sad I felt when I read in May that Tammy Faye Bakker Messner had decided to stop taking treatments for the cancer that was well on the way to killing her.
Why, I asked myself, would I feel common ground with the mascara-impaired wife of a televangelist who had famously cried for the cameras when her hubbo got caught with his pants down?
First of all, because anyone who has had to battle cancer has my sympathy, but more importantly because I believe that behind all that eye shadow and caricaturizing was a deeply decent person whose love of her God and all of his flock was genuine.
After her split from Jimbo, she went on to become a gay-rights advocate, which is so ironic since a gay friend tells me that she has been huge in the drag community since forever. She worked with troubled youths and was harshly critical of the hypocrisy of the church that made her famous and wealthy.
So it turns out that Tammy Faye was my kind of gal after all. May she rest in peace.
11 Responses to “Tammy Faye Messner (1942-2007)”
Mixed feelings.
Yes, she turned her life around, but she still scammed millions who pledged life savings to PTL.
That puts her somewhere between Fred Rogers and Dick Cheney.
But a little closer to Dick.
I think a good 90% of humanity is probably somewhere between those to extremes. Did she give the money back? If not, she’s much closer to Cheney.
Well, given her post-PTL lifestyle I wd say she did well off the scam, and her repentence. Again, she did not deserve such a torturous end, but because someone dies does not mean their past should be wiped clean. She was no saint.
Shakespeare’s Sister: RIP Tammy Faye
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No one says she was a saint, none of us are.
I can see cosmoetica is another compassionate liberal.
Laura:
I’m not a liberal. But I’m not going to forget the woman was a con artist who ruined the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Think of Tammy as the female Michael Milken.
One does not have to be a saint, however, to know that stealing from the poor and the elderly, PTL’s base, was wrong.
I know Tammy Faye spent many years with Jim and with PTL, and yes, those shows they did were part church service and part telethon for their church and, as it turned out, themselves.
I do appreciate where she ended up at – because she broke down the curtain at Oz, called shenanigans on a lot of religious hypocrisy, and – most importantly – came out with positive messages about LGBT people at a time when few, if any, religious figures at that recognition level would even mention the word “gay”.
I consider myself spiritual, and not specifically Christian, but I seem to recall some powerful messages in the Bible about forgiveness. You can, without forgetting the trespasses, offer forgiveness. Tammy Faye has mine.
A while back I thought that the cancer talk was another scam or delusion. But her last appearance on Larry King destroyed that cynical view. Her actions of late did some good to redeem her image. I will judge her better than a couple of men who were heavily involved in the PTL con. Jim Baker and Jerry Falwell are/were Elmer Gantry’s in their use of PTL for a search of wealth and power.
Remember Jerry Falwell became a steward of the PTL mess. IMO it wasn’t to right Noah’s Ark, it was a blatant takeover of a evangelical TV network of greater size and strength than his small church. Tammy Faye probably did redeem her past sins, the other two NEVER.
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