Farewell, Tammy Faye

                  

TWIT is sad to report that Tammy Faye Messner has died.  The former television evangelist had battled colon cancer for over ten years.  She was 65 years old.  Tammy Faye's tribute has been written by my dear, dear friend MP. 

I was absolutely mortified a few days ago to see a gaunt emaciated Tammy Faye Messner appearing on the Wednesday evening edition of Larry King.  A few weeks before, I had seen a picture of her in a grocery store tabloid but assumed the picture had been altered to create the desired shock factor that we have all acclimated to in long checkout lanes.  But this was real and I emotionally ached for this woman who still held out hope but appeared to be sinking fast.  Probably the best known and somewhat weird quirk that Tammy Faye seemed obsessed with was the excessive application of makeup, particularly mascara, and the donning of large artifacts of jewelry.  She was also well known for helping then husband, Jim Bakker, in the mid 1970s build a vast televangelical empire.  According to Wikipedia, the PTL empire continued to grow under the Bakkers' leadership, but the concern about their opulent lifestyle grew as media reports of an air-conditioned dog house at their Tega Cay, South Carolina lakefront parsonage as well as gold-plated bathroom fixtures dominated newscasts in the 1980s. The Bakkers' home, owned by the ministry, was actually an older home built in the early 1970s and it was a few miles away from Heritage USA. Jim Bakker stated that the much-talked-about dog house was heated with an old heater to keep the dogs warm in the winter and the reported gold-plated fixtures were actually brass. The home was later sold by the ministry and burned to the ground not long thereafter. Jim Bakker wrote in his book "I Was Wrong" that he watched the home burn on live television while incarcerated. In 1996, Tammy Faye emerged back to the limelight to co-host another TV talk show entitled The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show, with Jim J. Bullock, an HIV-positive and openly gay actor. The syndicated show ended when Tammy chose to leave after being diagnosed with colon cancer. In recent years, she was the subject of a documentary film entitled The Eyes of Tammy Faye (1999) and a follow up film entitled Tammy Faye: Death Defying (2004) from Lions Gate Films. She has also appeared on The Drew Carey Show, playing the mother of character Mimi Bobek (Kathy Kinney), who was also known for wearing excessive amounts of makeup. In early 2004, she appeared on the second season of the VH1 reality television series, The Surreal Life. The show chronicled a twelve-day period when she, porn star Ron Jeremy, rapper Vanilla Ice, Baywatch actress Traci Bingham, CHiPs actor Erik Estrada and Trishelle Cannatella from The Real World: Las Vegas all lived together in a Los Angeles house and were assigned various bizarre tasks and activities. 

The Surreal Life was the last time I saw Tammy Faye on air until the recent airing of Larry King.  I remember thinking how garish she looked in the 1980s and how my grandmother (who didn't wear makeup that much) said she looked like a clown.  But Tammy Faye LaValley Bakker Messner did love the look of heavy makeup and we loved the way she loved her look.  Even on Larry King, she proudly donned on a heavy application of mascara because the American public probably would not have recognized her without it.  I still ache for the insurmountable pain that she endured while battling the insidious cancer but her life was a walk of faith from the beginning and certainly in the end.  TWIT thanks Tammy Faye for the humor that she has provided through the decades and her gripping insight into grieving heartache. May angels with copious applications of mascara ensure Tammy Faye's expedient journey to heaven.