Backchannelmedia

News Sentinel

I've gotta say respectfully

I would love it if you would take the cameras off of me

'Cause I just want a little room to breathe

Can you please respect my privacy?

Why can't you just let me do

The things I wanna do?

I just wanna be me

I don't understand why

Would you wanna bring me down?

I'm only having fun

I'm gonna live my life (but not the way you want me to)

- Lindsay Lohan, "Rumors"

ONE LIFE TO LIVE: When former TV evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner lived in Gatlinburg in the 1980s, she says, she was so depressed that she asked God if she and her family could go ahead and die.

"I was very frightened when I lived in Gatlinburg. I was very nervous. I did not trust people," she tells the Insider.

"A lot of me was gone."

She and her then-husband, the Rev. Jim Bakker, were in the center of a scandal that destroyed their television ministry ("PTL," short for "Praise the Lord"). They were accused of bilking their followers out of millions. They were broke and under federal investigation.

The Bakkers fled to Gatlinburg, one of their favorite vacation spots, to retreat from the media circus surrounding the scandal. They lived in a friend's mountain home and tried to fit into the community.

Tammy Faye was never formally charged, but Jim ended up being convicted on federal counts and served time in prison.

She divorced Jim, with whom she has two children, while he served his sentence.

"I decided to live again when Jim and I got a divorce," she says.

Tammy Faye married longtime friend Roe Messner, and the two began a new life in North Carolina. The road after the scandal has not been smooth. Tammy Faye has had two bouts with cancer.

She thought the second cancer, with which she was diagnosed in 2003, would kill her.

During production of the reality show "Surreal Life," she suspected she had cancer. And, indeed, she had a 2-inch tumor on her lung, and it was inoperable.She continued to do the show and shared the revelation with only a few of the cast members.

The Tammy Faye of today wanted to fight the cancer. She says she did not have such resilience while she was a Gatlinburg resident.

If she'd faced cancer in those days, she says, "I would have said, 'God, take me home.' In those days, I was praying I would die anyway. Thank God he did not answer that prayer."

Tammy Faye's 2003 fight against her cancer is the subject of a TV special, "Tammy Faye: Death Defying," airing 10 p.m. Monday, July 25, on WE: Women's Entertainment.

The documentary follows Tammy Faye through chemotherapy, doctor visits and the social stigma that cancer can have. Cameras show her on a shopping spree, where she says she was too embarrassed to let people see her in public.

Although she has been in remission, she told Matt Lauer on Thursday's "Today" show taht the cancer is "back again." She said an MRI revealed a tumor on her vertebrae, and she's schedule dto resume chemotherapy Aug. 1.

"I'm going to kick cancer in the butt, and I'm not going to give up," she said on "Today."

Tammy Faye is sporting a blond look, a symbol of the new, resilient Tammy Faye.

After chemotherapy, her hair went from red to gray. "I decided to go back to blond, which I had a long time ago," Messner says. "And now that I have, people don't want me to go back to red.

"They say it's too dark for my personality. (Blond) represents a new freedom, a new confidence."

THE L (AS IN LOSER) WORD: Could East Tennessee have another reality-show contestant on network television this fall? Well, it looks like it. There's talk that 27-year-old Jefferson County resident Ryan Kelley will be featured on NBC's fall edition of the weight-loss series "The Biggest Loser."

Kelley, of course, can't say.

This is what we do know: Kelley auditioned for the show last fall as part of an 11-city casting call. According to one report, Kelley wowed the casting people by belting out a gospel-tinged ditty she composed called "My Eyes Are on My Rear."

They liked her so much, based on the song, that she was called up.

Here's more, but it comes with a slight warning.

POSSIBLE SPOILER.

Some spies say she returned from shooting the show with a definite weight loss, but time estimates of her departure and return suggest she probably did not win the whole shebang.

"The Biggest Loser" will return to NBC in September.

WORDS TO LIVE BY. "You know, we're not the only ones destroying trees. What about beavers? You call yourself an environmentalist; why don't you go club a few beavers?"

- Lindsay Fluke, "Arrested Development"