Who didn’t love Tammy Faye, who died this past week (but not before doing the full hour with Larry King)? She was crazy in that crazy American way. Singing and crying and loving on Jesus, then in the next breath telling you all major credit cards were accepted.

Her trademark was the triple-ply false eyelashes, mascara-streaked tears bubbling out through the blissed-out smiles, and an ability to sing, laugh and cry all in the same hallucinatory moment.

It was a talent later imitated but never quite equaled by another screaming-Mimi of the Christian Ministries, Jan Crouch, the Jayne Mansfield to Tammy’s purer, more sincere Marilyn.

Sincerity, that is, as far as it went for a wiggy televangelist like Tammy who would sprint off to dismal foreign slums for a day and wrap her on-camera arms around a starving child — some adorable wretch with big suffering eyes and flies alighting on his lips — and then all at once something kooky would happen.

The script would fly out of her head; Tammy could never linger too long on the negative. A sunburst would break through the tears, one of her notorious outbreaks of inappropriate giggling. She’d start praising the lord and thanking Jesus for all her own gifts, which could be yours too if you sent in the prayer money. Then, mission accomplished, sticky child removed from arm, she would store the big hair back on the private jet and fly home to one of several plantation-style mansions in the subdivisions of South Carolina.

Even staring starvation in the face, Tammy could only reflect that she was the most blessed child of the most loving God.

The gospel of Tammy Faye was the gospel of Let’s Go Shopping, and Tammy was never shy about calling on Jesus publicly, in the midst of a laugh-cry spasm, to petition for a a new Cadillac car or shiny satellite for the Jim and Tammy Christian broadcast network. With her husband she founded The PTL Club — short for “Praise the Lord.” (Or, as some insisted, “Pass the Loot.”)

“The centerpiece of their evangelical empire,” writes the Los Angeles Times , was “Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian theme park, resort and ministry headquarters in Fort Mill, S.C., [which] reportedly attracted some 6 million visitors in 1986. Those who stayed at what was often described as ‘a Christian Disneyland’ could buy eight different Tammy Faye record albums, not to mention items from the Tammy Faye line of cosmetics and pantyhose.”

And yet: There was something about Tammy, about her all-out joy in the material world, that was legit, that centered her and gave her a heart. “During the PTL shows,” Wikipedia reminds us, “Tammy provided a sentimental touch to stories and loved to sing. In a move that sharply distinguished her from other televangelists, she showed a more tolerant attitude when it came to homosexuals, and she featured people living with AIDS on PTL, urging her viewers to follow Christ and show sympathy and pray for the sick.”

Predictably, the ministry of Jim and Tammy Bakker went out in a radioactive cloud of tabloid scandal. Tammy showed a brave face to the world (though one never quite free of mascara streaks) while her husband languished in jail for defrauding Heritage USA time-share members. Eventually, though, after a short stay at the Betty Ford Hilton, she broke with the beleaguered Jim who, among other things, had been caught screwing his church secretary — afterward to pose for Playboy with augmented breast the size of car headlights — as well, perhaps, as seen cruising the local urinals — a story promoted by rival televangelists. As Bakker later explained to Larry King, “It was a lie but they knew it was the one sin Christians would never forgive.”

Tammy Faye, by this point, was entrenched as a beloved icon of low-brow beauty-shop kitsch, and much like Cher, who did something similar at the time, the divorce from her duller, dimmer mate only enhanced her own incandescence. Between the runny mascara and the gaudy outfits, Tammy Faye was a creature of fabulosity, an I Love Lucy goofball, and, as such, a natural gay icon, one that would be particularly celebrated, if that’s the right word, by drag queens.

When the gently mocking but mostly enthusiastic documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye came out, the lady had the good sense to embrace it, even hosting a showing of the film at the Toronto Outfest. Always one to get the joke, to laugh along at herself, she proved a game and lovable contestant on the reality show The Surreal Life, where she and other nearly forgotten novelty stars had to live together in an offbeat party house . There she struck up a warm friendship with the sweet but breathtakingly homely porn star Ron Jeremy and gave motherly advice to a tat-covered, newly buff Vanilla Ice, as well as that gay jerkoff fantasy of yesteryear, Erick Estrada.

Again the monk-like pop historians of Wikipedia remind us that during an unexpectantly touching episode of Surreal Life, in which Tammy was appearing at a book signing to promote her book telling people they could survive cancer as she had, she “made a plea for all people to grant themselves permission to cast off the things that are holding them back, to forgive themselves and others, to be happy with themselves whoever they are, to persevere in the face of opposition, and to show each other unconditional love. Her speech moved the four roommates who were present to tears…”

It was right about the time the episode aired , in March 2004, that Tammy Faye was told she had inoperable lung cancer. And so we saw her last week on Larry King, unrecognizable, shockingly withered up into herself like a prune, taking her leave of this world.

Tom Gregory wrote a beautiful obit for The Huffington Post. An excerpt follows:

Tammy Faye would call her beloved bible “God’s word,” then hand you a copy she had autographed herself — that was Tammy Faye. She wore pain for a moment and optimism for a lifetime. Her brand wasn’t all religion — it was all Tammy Faye.

Tammy knew the power of television. Her famous tear-filled tales were always wrapped in bunny-and-rainbow endings. Long before Oprah’s famous on-air tours of her closet, Tammy Faye proudly lived the good life on TV. She talked openly about some of her favorite possessions, thanking the good lord for her luxuries while reassuring her flock that she NEEDED none of it. Her God had been the one to spoil her; who were we to judge?

Tammy Faye became a friend to everyone, including the gay community. Relatively early in the AIDS epidemic she welcomed a patient onto her afternoon chat show Tammy Faye’s House Party. She had no room for biblical intolerance. After television had abandoned her, she appeared routinely at Gay Pride festivals. The moralists had no place for her evolving kindnesses; they christened her a loose cannon. She didn’t seem to care. Her world was intact…

Tammy spoke about her gay fans in her last interview (which you can see here.) We prefer to remember her in her glory days. Below we find her in full flow as she witnesses to — of all people — Mickey Rooney.

Ah Tammy Faye, Our Lady of the Mascara. Miraculous springs of mascara are flowing everywhere today in spontaneous blessing.