Before Ted Haggard and his trips to Denver, and just after Jim Bakker and his hush money to Jessica Hahn, there was the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart.
His 1987 trip to a New Orleans prostitute set the standard for evangelical sex scandals in the modern era, thanks to his weepy and melodramatic “I have sinned” confession — after he was caught, of course. (His ministry was raking in $150 million a year at the time.)
Jimmy Swaggart was born in 1935 — 75 years ago today.