On Friday, I was watching a video clip of Tammy Faye on CNN. Just one look at her told me that she would not be around for long, listening to her told me that she was ready to go. And the very next day, she did.
What an interesting story, what a change in circumstances and what a turn her life took. Think back to the 1980s when she was the queen of the teleevangelists, those holier-than-thou money grubbers (I’m so glad that they are mostly gone, dead and buried, but I wish that their mantle hadn’t been taken up by politicians instead). If she had died in, say, 1987, would you really have cared? Would you have, perhaps, smirked a bit or even felt that she got what was coming to her?
But now, in 2007, she was a different person. And ironically, her biggest fans and supporters were gay people and the disenfranchised, people who know a little bit about being persecuted. She managed to become beloved despite it all, which is no small accomplishment.
Her path was long and windy, and went in the wrong direction more than once. But those tenets of redemption and love? Wow… unlike the vast majority of self-righteous fundamentalists, she actually achieved them.
