And so it goes. Not sure what to say about this other than, hopefully he and Tammy Fay are reunited in their proper place.
He sure got my vote in the Abe Vigoda contest. Had you asked me yesterday I’d have said I thought he’d been gone a decade.
“Better late than never” is always a good saying.
Around 1976 or 1977, I was a pre-teen in Green Bay, at a time before my family had cable TV, and there were only four TV stations in the city (CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS); only one of those stations went on the air before 7am, and they usually showed old sitcom reruns. I’d be awake and out of bed by 6am, and I’d turn the TV on, because there was little else to do before I got ready for school.
Jim and his “PTL Club” bought time on that station, and that show was what ran at 6am for a year or so. Despite not being an evangelical Christian, and having zero interest in becoming one, I watched the silly show. Lots of fundraising pleas, lots of Tammy Fae singing, and, as I remember it, regular updates on how the faithful’s donations were helping them to expand the PTL campus, to “do God’s work.”
Sometimes I’m a little sorry that I don’t believe in Hell.
I thought he died years ago.
I view him as a prototype version of Trump.
My favorite quote from Jim, which I posted about before…
I worked at a small UHF television station in the early-to-mid 1980s when Jim and Tammy Faye were probably at their peak. Both PTL and 700 Club paid big bucks to be on local TV stations all over the country that otherwise wouldn’t have had the money to fill odd times with syndication. It was easy cash. Just plug in, praise the Lord and wait for the check.
One day Jim Bakker’s co-host “Uncle” Henry Harrison made a personal appearance locally. He was to Bakker kind of what Ed McMahon was to Johnny Carson. Lo and behold, hundreds of people showed up to meet him. It was creepy but not at all surprising for the area.
What I had not known, until I read Bakker’s Wikipedia entry today, is that he started out working with Pat Robertson at his Christian Broadcasting Network in the late '60s; Bakker was the first full-time host of The 700 Club, before he and Tammy Faye left CBN in 1973.
On his 1981 album You Are What You Is, Frank Zappa wrote a couple songs about Jim Bakker and others of his ilk. And the songs are not complimentary.
Tammy Faye actually turned into a reasonable facsimile of a human being after PTL collapsed because she felt abandoned by her people. Since she was a camp icon, she tried to give them the same grace they gave her. She was also friends with Jm J. Bullock, who taught her that gays aren’t the devil.
Her ex-husband, on the other hand, never stopped being a grifting piece of crap. I saw some of his pitches for that food in a bucket stuff and it was a straight-up con.
There are a number of YouTube videos of people who purchased that swill, and prepared it and tried to eat it. Yeah, there are reasons why genuine preppers do not recommend things like this.
He was a minor celebrity in my town for a while. From Wikipedia:
At the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, he shared a cell with activist Lyndon LaRouche and skydiver Roger Nelson.[51]
Alas, I never got a chance to meet him.
“Silly show” sums it up well. It used to be on before the late movie on a local UHF channel, and I’d tune in because I wanted to watch the movie, and it was just easier to manually change the channel (no remote) after the late news and not worry about changing it at movie time.
It actually wasn’t too bad a show. Very well produced, with entertaining music. I’m not much on Christian music, but as background noise while I read the paper before the movie, it was fine. But the come-ons, and pleas for money, and selling timeshares in Heritage USA. Holy hannah!
So Jim Bakker has passed. I cannot say that I am sorry to hear of his passing (I knew a few people his PTL Club conned), but he had a long life. I hope his passing was peaceful.
Yes, she got to have a curious final act redemption arc after dumping Bakker. Her prolonged ill health in her final years also earned much sympathy.
Jim on the other hand even after doing time remained an unrepentant grifter taking advantage of the vulnerable.
So a reunion on the Other Shore may not be in the cards, if such were a possibility.
Goodness gracious, what a Reality Show that could have been…
Well before the scandals a lot of my family moved to Charlotte to work for the PTL club. Nobody really talks about Jim Bakker, but Tammy Faye is remembered fondly by them, for things like visiting my uncle when he was on his deathbed with cancer.
I was partial to the Reverend Gene Scott who was…something. His widow is notoriously litigious and controls access to all of his old video clips, so a lot of the “good stuff” isn’t on YouTube. But dude could get WACKY particularly if he had been up for many hours in one of his epic marathons. I never could take too much, but me and my step-brothers would occasionally check him out on whatever fuzzy public access channel he happened to be on to see if he was wearing a plumed helmet while ranting about viewers not donating enough in between a long-winded exegesis about ancient Aramaic translations of the bible.
She was also on one season of a “reality” show - The Surreal Life - and became close friends with Ron Jeremy.
Watched “The Eyes of Tammy Fae”, and got a little respect for her. Once PTL died, it seems that she really did find reality. Her championing homosexual rights and for AIDS patients endured her to the LGBTQ+ community.
Jim, on the other hand, went back to being a grifting POS. If there is a Hell, he’s there.
They briefly co-hosted a syndicated talk show called The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show.
Perhaps I’m dense, but I’m trying to imagine what “skydiver Roger Nelson” could have done to earn years of torture like that.