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YES: Does Larry King need ratings so badly that he had to drag poor, wasted Tammy Faye Baker Messner out of her death bed for a disgusting TV peep show just hours before she died? Even with her sunken face sloshed with her trademark overloaded make-up, she looked like a freshly-dug-up, 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy.

Some people may admire the late TV evangelist and divorced wife of two jailed religion peddlers. She did put up a valiant fight against inoperable cancer for two years, and according to King, actually requested the final interview. It must have taken an enormous physical and emotional effort for the dying woman to prepare for and get to the interview. Further, during the program, obviously in great pain and showing difficulty in speaking, she was able to express her deep religious faith.

Tammy Faye reached the height of her popularity in the 1970s as the wife and partner of televangelist Jim Bakker, the founders of the PTL (Praise The Lord) enterprise. During its best years, PTA's TV programs were aired on over 1,400 stations and earned a millions a month, mostly money sent in by millions of true believers in envelopes containing a few dollars each.

Skeptics and comedians labeled the PTL as Pass The Loot, because the Bakkers used much of the mostly-untraceable money on personal items such as lavish homes, cars, jewelry and multiple bank accounts. In addition to a spreading real estate empire called Heritage USA in North Carolina, PTL also opened a Disney-like amusement park. By the middle '80s, PTL ceased to be a growing empire as personal scandals, bribery of a Jim Bakker girlfriend, money laundering and other financial irregularities became public. It all ended in bankruptcy.

Jim was arrested and sent to jail, and although Tammy Faye had been an integral part of PTL, she was never indicted. During Jim's four years in jail, Tammy Faye divorced him. She then married former PTL contractor Roe Messner, the chief builder of Heritage USA. Messner went to prison for Federal bankruptcy fraud for his participation in PTL's empire collapse. Not too anxious to stand by her second man, Tammy Faye divorced him.

Tammy Faye spent a lifetime preaching and singing about the evils of sin, but her story shows that she was a world-class sinner herself. However, whether she asked for the TV interview or not, Larry King showed nothing more than extremely crass commercialism by exploiting the unfortunate woman's final hours for his greedy personal gain.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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