Word: scandalizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...combined both. But since hypocrisy is as endemic in the press as it is in politics, the press defended its behavior by stressing the importance of the story. Importance did not require a competition to see who could get the sexiest picture of Donna Rice with Hart, which the scandal tabloid National Enquirer...
...transfixed skeptic and believer alike. Flanked by his moist-eyed wife Tammy Faye, Bakker informed Nightline Host Ted Koppel and his television audience -- the largest in the show's seven-year history -- that his lethal enemy was the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the televangelist to whom he had entrusted his scandal-stained PTL* ministry last March. Bakker portrayed Falwell as a liar and thief...
Succeeding weeks brought new disclosures of scandal, including accusations that the Bakkers and their cronies had siphoned huge sums of money from PTL and allegations that Jim had been involved in homosexual activity. Four weeks ago, Bakker was ousted from the ministry by the Assemblies of God, a major Pentecostal denomination. Jim and Tammy fled to their handsome retreat in Palm Springs, Calif., from which Jim sent messages indicating that at some point he hoped to reclaim his domain...
...Falwell renege? He freely admitted changing his mind as the scandal continued to unfold. Falwell charged that he has since learned that on the day in 1980 in Florida when, according to Hahn, Bakker and his companion, Evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, had intercourse with her, a PTL staffer then attempted to do the same, and Bakker later asked the third man, "Did you get her too?" Said Falwell: "That made my blood boil." Falwell-installed auditors subsequently discovered that the $265,000 in hush money had been siphoned from PTL accounts through a false billing...
...scandal seems to have had a fallout effect on some other televangelists. Falwell admits that proceeds at various enterprises in Lynchburg were down $2 million in April; Jimmy Swaggart reports a $1.5 million decline for that month. The Rev. Robert Schuller of Garden Grove, Calif., whose popular Hour of Power is carried by 172 TV stations, shows a 3% dip in donations so far in 1987, but he does not consider that necessarily a result of the PTL scandal. The televangelist with the most to lose is the one with the biggest video operation, Republican Presidential Candidate Pat Robertson...