Jay Bakker Gets Reality Series
BLITZER: His last name is infamous and synonymous to many with scandal and hypocrisy. But the son of disgraced televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker is trying to shed their past and build his own very unconventional ministry. Carol Costello has been looking into this story and she's got it for us -- Carol.</s>CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's an interesting story Wolf. You know that infamous name Bakker is hard to escape. Growing up fully aware of Jay Bakker's parents, I didn't know what to expect when I met their 31-year-old son. Let me put it this way, he is no Jim Bakker.</s>JAY BAKKER, PASTOR, CHURCH CO-FOUNDER: Jesus is reaching out to those who people didn't like.</s>COSTELLO (voice-over): Inclusion is the message here. A shabby chic Brooklyn bar where people gather to hear a punk rock preacher, Jay Bakker.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If these were your parents, what would you do? Love and stand by them? Follow in their footsteps or question all you've been taught? Briefly self-destruct and turn religion on its head?</s>BAKKER: The answer -- all of the above.</s>COSTELLO: Bakker's parents are fallen televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye, he's using their sins and becoming the it preacher, the subject of a reality series on the Sundance Channel. His face plastered on buses along with his not so hip message, it's cool to be Christian. To some, Christian is a dirty word, Christian is something that you run from.</s>BAKKER: You hear the word "Christian" you automatically think, oh, you're Jerry Falwell.</s>COSTELLO: Or Jim Bakker.</s>BAKKER: Or Jim Bakker, yeah, you know.</s>COSTELLO: Insert whatever irony you want here. His father Jim Bakker led the "Praise the Lord" ministry, he was the it preacher of the Christian right in the '80s. Ranking in at his peak $172 million in revenue, until Bakker went morally bust after a sexual tryst with church secretary Jessica Hawn. He wound up in jail for stealing from his followers. But that was back in '89 and the sins of the father have been forgiven.</s>BAKKER: I get along with my dad pretty well. I mean we have our struggles and we're constantly trying to work things out as father and son.</s>JIM BAKKER, TELEVANGELIST: Great to have you all here today, my son is in the house! It's hard trying to hide the fact that he's my son, you know. And so he has tattoos.</s>JAY BAKKER: Look, I got a PTL tattoo.</s>COSTELLO: Jim Bakker now has a new TV ministry himself, but don't confuse it with his son's. Jay's Revolution Church strives to be boldly different. It's motto, we're sorry for being self-righteous judgmental bastards and for injecting ourselves in places we don't belong.</s>JAY BAKKER: You know the conservative right has hijacked politics but I think they've worked off of each other, I think they've used each other, and to me, it's caused the church to be in quite a sad state right now.</s>COSTELLO: Sad, because the religious rite, Jay says is so unforgiving in its moral judgments. That's why gays, pro abortionists, everyone is welcome in his revolution church. As for whether Jay Bakker's new kind of church will ever be as big as his father's ministry once was, forget it. As Bakker puts it, we are not about celebrity and all about message.</s>COSTELLO: A word about Jay's mom, Tammy Faye Bakker, she is suffering from stage four lung cancer, is now in hospice. And has always had a close relationship with her son Jay. Jay has nothing but lovely warm things to say about his mother, but Wolf she's in pretty bad shape, in fact, she's dying.</s>BLITZER: We wish her only the best. Thanks very much. Excellent piece, Carol Costello reporting for us from New York. Let's stay in New York and check in with Lou Dobbs, he's getting ready for his program that begins right at the top of the hour -- Lou.</s>LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you. Tonight we're reporting on a federal crackdown on illegal aliens using phony social security cards and other phony IDs and working at meat packing plants across the country. Will these raids do anything to stop illegal immigration? Will it stop those illegal aliens from stealing your identity? We'll have a special report for you tonight. And the worsening dangers to the nation's food supply. Contaminated tomatoes, spinach, onions, making hundreds of people across the country sick in recent months. What has happened to our food supply? Is our food supply safe? We'll have that report for you tonight. And middle class Americans struggling while disgraced members of Congress collecting generous pensions and, oh, yes, health benefits for life. What in the world is going on? We'll have that special report and I'll be talking with the incoming chairman of the House Education Committee, Congressman George Miller, about his plan to save our failing public education system. Please join us at the top of the hour here on CNN. Wolf, back to you.</s>BLITZER: Lou, we certainly will. Thanks very much for that. Lou Dobbs coming up in a few minutes. Half the states would run out of hospital beds in the event of a moderate pandemic flu outbreak that according to a report released today. How would your state handle a health emergency? Let's turn once again to Jacki Schechner, she has the situation online -- Jacki.</s>JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: Wolf, according to this report, only 15 states are fully prepared to provide emergency vaccines and medical supplies. The report is called "ready or not" and it's the fourth annual report of its kind from the "Trust for America's Health," which is a non profit non partisan health advocacy organization. And the report took 10 indicators to decide whether or not a state would be ready in case of an emergency. And the only state that got 10 out of 10 was Oklahoma. New Jersey was one of the four states that only got four out of 10. The New Jersey Health commissioner took issue with the report, listing a whole slew of explanations why the New Jersey state is actually prepared. Now one of the good things about this report they said that three quarters of the states and their labs are now prepared to test for bioterrorism. They also say that every state in the country now has a pandemic flu plan in place. The Centers for Disease Control called the report a good tool for raising awareness -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Jacki, thanks for that. And still to come, Jack Cafferty wants to know, should the 110th Congress permanently cut out the pork attached to spending bills. We'll have that when we come back.