I AM NOT AN ATHEIST BECAUSE OF HYPOCRISY IN RELIGION. I AM AN ATHEIST BECAUSE I DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD.
Penn Jillette on his radio show to Michael Goudeau.
It was 1988. Subgenius preachers were in shock. Jimmy Swaggert, cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley, had been caught in a sleazy motel with a hooker.
It hit the Church like a ton of bricks. Early preachers like Janor Hypercleates and the Pope of New York had patterned themselves in a fashion after him. After Gene Scott he was the second most influential earth preacher on the Church of the Subgenius.
He was real. He had to have the demons that haunted Jerry Lee Lewis, yet he controlled them.
Or so we thought.
It actually hit the Church harder than his own church, we had come to see him as the yin to Jerry Lee's yang.
Turns out, they both live in the shadows.
How do I know? In 1991 he was pulled over by police, and he had a hooker he had just picked up in his car. The press didn't make a big deal out of this because by this time he had faded.
But at his prime......
Swaggert had taken over his church after the head (Marvin) was caught in an affair. It was a hostile take over. When the Bakers and their PTL Club fell apart he was happy, and called them a cancer on Christianity! The guy who exposed him for going to hookers- was the one he had replaced. He paid the guy money until he got tired of it, and the guy went public.
"In March 89, some woman named Catherine Campen gave an interview to Penthouse magazine, in which she claimed to have had an extramarital affair with the preacher. Between July 87 and January 88, they had met up on ten separate occasions. She mentioned beating him with a riding crop, but only after Swaggart convinced her to do it.
Then in July, Penthouse ran an exclusive interview with the prostitute, Debra Murphree. She claimed that Jimmy once inquired whether he could fuck her child:
He'd ask me if I'd ever let anyone screw my daughter when she was that young, and I said, "No, She's only nine years old." He asked me if she started developing or if she had any hair down there. [...] "I can picture my cock going in and out of a pussy like that," he said.
These revelations were a sales and marketing bonanza for Penthouse magazine" http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/televangelists/jimmy-swaggart/
It was a sad day when Swaggert revealed himself. We had grown to like the guy. I know I had. Now I'd rather drink with his cousin Jerry Lee. If you are gonna whore, shouldn't you be in a religion that condones whoring?
Now before I get to "Bob" and close this chapter, I have to move. I'll be back in a couple of weeks.
Posted at 11:37 am by Psychomike
