The Cries of Tammy Faye
I had mixed reactions when I heard that Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker) had died. She suffered from colon cancer for many years. I’m sure her last months were not pleasant. With the exception of a few truly evil people, I don’t like to see anyone suffer, no matter what they’ve done.
Those who knew me in the 1980s know how much enjoyment I derived making fun of Jim and Tammy Faye. They were the buffoons of the televangelists. The makeup, the crying, the singing, the amusement park. It went on and on. No matter what crazy parody I came up with, a few weeks later the Bakkers would actually top it. I think it was Tom Wolfe who once said something about how hard it is to parody reality, because reality always finds a way of being more absurd than anything anybody can dream up. So it was with the Bakkers.
The Associated Press obituary sums up that era well:
For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband Jim’s infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara, became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s America.
PZ Myers has a harsher eulogy:
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.
I’m willing to cut her just a little bit of slack. I don’t know how much she really knew about the fraudulent activities of Heritage USA. She never faced charges, but that doesn’t mean she was innocent. Maybe her crime was self-centered negligence. She should have known what was going on, but she was too wrapped up in herself to care. That’s still guilt. That’s still being responsible for the crimes that were committed for her benefit. But there’s no malice there. Being selfish isn’t as bad as being wicked.
Or was she wicked? Have the two decades since this stuff happened erased all of my memories of her wrongdoings? Are my memories of all of the fun I had making jokes at her expense obscuring the vile things she did?
In today’s world, we have the Bush/Cheney cabal. They are shredding our Constitution, diverting hundreds of billions of our dollars to their Haliburton cronies, destroying our standing in the world, and leaving us more vulnerable to terrorism. We now know what evil truly is.
Compared to all that Bush & Cheney are, how bad could Tammy Faye have been? Am I being nostalgic? In the 1980s, we could laugh at the bad guys. If only we could laugh at the bad guys now. Yes, Tammy Faye, I’m sorry you got cancer. I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry for us all.
