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RIP Jim Bakker

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ideologyhunter

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He died yesterday at age 86. His wikipedia entry calls him a televangelist and conviced felon in its first sentence, and that says it all. Well, he was also an idiot, which was apparent if you listened to him for more than five minutes.
He was the last of the gospel ballyhoo scammers from 50 or 60 years ago, the heyday of the American televangelist. I can't think of anyone else from that era who's still around.
His PTL empire was one bizarre Ponzi scheme, and Jim also had the sex scandal angle covered. And the first wife -- ye gods, where to start. I used to watch those two on a 6 a.m. broadcast before I went to work in the 80s. They never ceased to amaze me. The one question I could never convincingly answer: who are the people who write checks to these idiots??? What are their lives like? Do they find Jim and Tammy endearing?
One show I remember ran the week of Tammy's birthday, and I swear that Jim announced he had bought her a giraffe that would live at Heritage USA (their kingdom.) Does anyone else remember this?
Anyway, it all came crashing down, with the help of local prosecutors and Jerry Falwell. There was Jim's mental breakdown, a prison sentence (I believe it started as 40 years for multiple fraud counts, but he was out sometime in the 90s, I think.)
And of course he gravitated back to huckstering on TV. During covid he was pushing quack medicine until the government threatened to prosecute. In recent years, he was hawking giant industrial buckets of survival food. You know, for your bunker, while you were waiting for Lord Jesus to come down and clear out the zombies and the Antichrist. And of course he still found folks who were bigger idiots than him who'd buy multi-gallon buckets of cheese sauce, soup, chocolate pudding, etc. etc. Vats of glop that have now outlived Jim himself.
 
I saw a video of Baker promoting those buckets of soup and it was so stupid, I thought it must be AI. The funniest part was Baker encouraging people to by enough buckets to make a coffee table out of them by putting a cover on them.
 
ideologyhunter said:
He died yesterday at age 86. His wikipedia entry calls him a televangelist and conviced felon in its first sentence, and that says it all. Well, he was also an idiot, which was apparent if you listened to him for more than five minutes.
He was the last of the gospel ballyhoo scammers from 50 or 60 years ago, the heyday of the American televangelist. I can't think of anyone else from that era who's still around.
His PTL empire was one bizarre Ponzi scheme, and Jim also had the sex scandal angle covered. And the first wife -- ye gods, where to start. I used to watch those two on a 6 a.m. broadcast before I went to work in the 80s. They never ceased to amaze me. The one question I could never convincingly answer: who are the people who write checks to these idiots??? What are their lives like? Do they find Jim and Tammy endearing?
One show I remember ran the week of Tammy's birthday, and I swear that Jim announced he had bought her a giraffe that would live at Heritage USA (their kingdom.) Does anyone else remember this?
Anyway, it all came crashing down, with the help of local prosecutors and Jerry Falwell. There was Jim's mental breakdown, a prison sentence (I believe it started as 40 years for multiple fraud counts, but he was out sometime in the 90s, I think.)
And of course he gravitated back to huckstering on TV. During covid he was pushing quack medicine until the government threatened to prosecute. In recent years, he was hawking giant industrial buckets of survival food. You know, for your bunker, while you were waiting for Lord Jesus to come down and clear out the zombies and the Antichrist. And of course he still found folks who were bigger idiots than him who'd buy multi-gallon buckets of cheese sauce, soup, chocolate pudding, etc. etc. Vats of glop that have now outlived Jim himself.
Click to expand...
I used to watch him before he got busted as well, for the comedic relief. Watching Tammy cry about every stupid little thing while her face slowly transforms into Alice Cooper was always entertaining. The 70's and 80's were the golden age of televangelists. A lot of them eventually went down in a ball of flames for one unsavory reason or another. Jimmy Swaggert, Peter Popoff (thank you James Randi), Rex Humbard, Robert Tilton and (later) Ted Haggard. Yet all that doesn't stop the sheep from moving on to the next shyster.
 
Yes, Tammy was definitely a manic-depressive double helping of Cool Whip. The way she'd warble those Christian pop numbers with heavy vibrato in her vocals...the recitative portions of the sappier numbers...the fashions (she was into headbands for a while, which made her look like a kabuki player who'd wandered into a Jane Fonda workout)...and the fucking tears!! Tears over everything/anything.
Exhausting to watch for long, but for 15 minutes before my workday started, it was a perfect touch of surreal comedy.
 
The Bakker's downfall provided an object lesson for fellow Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, although not the one he really needed.

When the scandal broke, the leadership of the corporate Church if God had no idea how to deal with it. It quickly went from sexual abuse scandal to "Who knew what and when". There was plenty of blame to go around. They did the sensible thing and asked Jerry Falwell, a Baptist televangelist to step in to save the credibility of the CoG. It was sort of like firing a football coach who has a winning record, but a losing season. Falwell verdict was the Bakkers had to go. No forgiveness, no rehab, they were lucky to escape stoning.

The actual local church of which the PTL Club was a subsidiary was set up like most Pentecostal churches. It was part of the CoG corporation and the corporation owned all the property. The Bakkers, as corporate officers had full access and control of all the property, which included five or more very nice homes, scattered across the country. When the Bakkers were expelled from the CoG, they were homeless, plus most of the stuff they considered "private property", cars, refrigerators, etc, was seized as well. Homeless and destitute.

Jimmy Swaggart was paying attention. When his little local Pentecostal church began to expand into his televangelist empire, he personally owned all the real estate and movable property. This meant he had a much greater tax bill than the Bakkers, but he could afford it. Swaggart's downfall was strictly a sexual scandal. He has not used church funds as hush money, and his transgressions were with prostitutes, not virginal church employees. None the less, the corporate CoG, assumed they now had to deal with a mega-church stadium, a Bible college, and his very big house, in the same way they took over the Bakker's theme park. Swaggart told them to get the stuff they did own and get it off his property. It took a few days, but every reference to the CoG on the Swaggart campus was removed and although Jimmy was on the sidelines, the Swaggart family still owned everything.
 
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