The Salt Lake Trib has a surprisingly robust editorial on the passing of Tammy Faye Bakker Messner. I’ve never approved of televangelists whose conspicuous consumption while spouting the so-called “prosperity gospel” seemed out of keeping with the Biblical message of helping the poor – it was too much like helping themselves to as much cash they could cadge from a gullible public. But even so, “nil nisi bonum” and all that.

Although, I’m pretty taken with the image of Tammy Faye’s spackle – you know, that stuff she laid on with a trowel.

Salt Lake Tribune – Tammy Faye Messner: Epitomized the showbiz-ification of Christianity

Regrettably, Tammy Faye Bakker’s downfall discredited neither the prosperity gospel – which holds that God wants you to get rich and that wealth is a sign of favor – nor the burlesque style of televangelism, which continues to, well, prosper. Diamonds, like the Almighty, are forever.

In the end, not even her wigs, wealth, spackle and relentlessly upbeat personality could mask the pain of mortality. The cancer-ravaged Messner looked and sounded like a wraith in her poignant CNN interview that aired hours before she died. The power of positive thinking was no defense against the grave’s assault on her gaudy artifice. The gruesome final television moments of the prosperity gospel’s giggly paragon ironically revealed the grim truth in Flannery O’Connor’s line: You can’t be any poorer than dead.

[tags]Tammy Faye, spackle[/tags]