Tammy Faye Bakker – R.I.P.

I would guess that Mike Judge modeled King of the Hill character Luanne after Tammy Faye. I have used this picture instead of the recent ones floating around
so you would not get too ‘scareded. But if you are a glutton for punishment, click on it and suffer the real thing.

Tammy Faye was one of the few Evangelical Christian celebrities who put a smiley face on the otherwise intolerant, bigoted and judgmental hypocrisy endemic to the Christian Right. She also gave even the most cynical of us an understanding that religion can be a positive celebration for women a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Even when she says stupid things like when she so seriously explained, “Satan got into our computer!” to defend the PTL scandal of her husband Jim Bakker, who overselling timeshares to the tune of tens of millions of dollars spent ten years in the pokey. My heart went out to her after she suffered the affair her husband had with Jessica Hahn, followed shortly by his fall into prison. Then as bad luck would have it, she remarried another Evangalical Christian who also went to jail for two years for fraud. Fraud sure seems to be constant staple of that evangelical television brand of Christianity.

But Tammy had good quotes too, “When we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that.” Also her work combating AIDS and her never failing faith and optimism has won her my heart as well as the heart of most of the world.