Mon 22 May 00 20:32
Blanche Nonken

Late last year, after Swaggert applied to the FCC for a license to operate a radio station in our little town (application's still pending, I think), the Lexington (KY) "Herald Leader" ran some long articles about what God's Own Crybaby is up to of late. For those who can't get enough of this second-rate religious soap opera (Jim and Tammy Faye set the standard and nobody else has come up to it yet), here's what I recall from the HL articles:

If you see tape of Swaggert teaching on his home ground, note the black curtains hung in the background. They're hung so no one sees he's preaching to a handful of the seating capacity of his home "church." And there are no more of those long distance pans across thousands of avid disciples; instead there are tightly focused shots on groups of fifteen or twenty. The HL speculated Swaggert keeps preaching because a) the church status is helpful for tax purposes and b) it's what he _does_, don'tcha know?

Before the Assemblies of God defrocked him, JS was a dependable by the Book tither. Now that he's independent, he gets to keep all the money, and it's a considerable amount. Louisiana state government has rented almost all his old Bible college "campus," as well as most of the other buildings that used to be part of his "ministry." The reasoning was renting these nearly-new buildings was cheaper for the state than building their own, and Swaggert's take is enormous.

The HL said he rakes in buckets of money from syndicated and cable radio programs, which is what the local station would be for: bouncing his signals off sundry satellites. He's got a large internet presence that's also said to be quite lucrative, but whenever I do web searches it also looks well disguised. You can find it, but there ain't many photos of ol' JS on the pages.

But face facts:

He can cry as good as Tammy, but doesn't wear enough make-up for a satisfactory "melting face" effect.

He's almost as polymorphously perverse ("anything with a hole") as Jimmy (you all _do_ know the real reasons the Assemblies of God kicked _him_ out, don't you?), but won't actually "do" %em. He just makes them strike cheesy poses in cheap motel rooms..

He ain't even got a 900 foot tall Jesus, like Oral had.

http://www.netbasix.com/~rlsloan/

Stories, poetry, "Notes From the Top of the Hill," and some funny stuff.

Listen to MP3 "notes" at
http://www.morehead-st.edu/units/wmky/wmky_reports.htm