Tammy Faye Bakker Was a Media Symbol of Reagan Eighties

Tammy Faye Messner -- who became infamous as Tammy Faye Bakker -- died Saturday of cancer. Jim Bakker and his wife were rich fodder for the liberal media as their "PTL" televangelism empire collapsed in 1988 and their financial excesses were exposed, right down to the air-conditioned doghouse. Liberal media types found the Bakkers to be the very model of Reagan's Decade of Greed, as we noted in Notable Quotables:

"To the self-indulgent age of the '80s and to the characters that gave it special flavor at home -- Oliver L. North and Ronald Reagan, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Arthur Laffer and his curve, the Yuppies and the leveraged buyout dealmakers -- good riddance."
-- Former Washington Post editor and current columnist Haynes Johnson, December 29, 1990.

Sadly, Haynes Johnson -- one of the Post's most dramatic liberal hacks -- was a regular on "Washington Week in Review" and "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS. For a time, Johnson was even included mysteriously on the NewsHour's panel of historians.