title: Arizona

text: A November 2011 Public Policy Polling survey found 44% of Arizona voters supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, while 45% opposed it and 12% were not sure. A separate question on the same survey found 72% of respondents supported legal recognition of same-sex couples, with 40% supporting same-sex marriage, 32% supporting civil unions, 27% opposing all legal recognition and 1% not sure. Arizona Proposition 102, known by its supporters as the Marriage Protection Amendment, appeared as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on the November 4, 2008 ballot in Arizona, where it was approved: 56–43%. It amended the Arizona Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.


title: Arizona

text: On October 17, 2014, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced his office would no longer object to same-sex marriage, in response to a U.S. District Court Ruling on Arizona Proposition 102. On that day, each county's Clerk of the Superior Court began to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and Arizona became the 31st state to legalize same-sex marriage.


title: Arizona

text: Public schools in Arizona are separated into about 220 local school districts which operate independently, but are governed in most cases by elected county school superintendents; these are in turn overseen by the Arizona State Board of Education and the Arizona Department of Education. A state Superintendent of Public Instruction (elected in partisan elections every even-numbered year when there is not a presidential election, for a four-year term). In 2005, a School District Redistricting Commission was established with the goal of combining and consolidating many of these districts.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona is served by three public universities: The University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University. These schools are governed by the Arizona Board of Regents.


title: Arizona

text: Private higher education in Arizona is dominated by a large number of for-profit and "chain" (multi-site) universities.


title: Arizona

text: Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott and Prescott College are Arizona's only non-profit four-year private colleges.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona has a wide network of two-year vocational schools and community colleges. These colleges were governed historically by a separate statewide board of directors but, in 2002, the state legislature transferred almost all oversight authority to individual community college districts. The Maricopa County Community College District includes 11 community colleges throughout Maricopa County and is one of the largest in the nation.


title: Arizona

text: Phoenix Art Museum, on the historic Central Avenue Corridor in Phoenix, is the Southwest's largest collection of visual art from across the world. The museum displays international exhibitions alongside the museum's collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. With a community education mandate since 1951, Phoenix Art Museum holds a year-round program of festivals, live performances, independent art films and educational programs. The museum also has PhxArtKids, an interactive space for children; photography exhibitions through the museum's partnership with the Center for Creative Photography; the landscaped Sculpture Garden and dining at Arcadia Farms.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona is a recognized center of Native American art, with a number of galleries showcasing historical and contemporary works. The Heard Museum, also in Phoenix, is a major repository of Native American art. Some of the signature exhibits include a full Navajo hogan, the Mareen Allen Nichols Collection containing 260 pieces of contemporary jewelry, the Barry Goldwater Collection of 437 historic Hopi kachina dolls, and an exhibit on the 19th-century boarding school experiences of Native Americans. The Heard Museum has about 250,000 visitors a year.


title: Arizona

text: Sedona, Jerome, and Tubac are known as budding artist colonies, and small arts scenes exist in the larger cities and near the state universities.


title: Arizona

text: Several major Hollywood films, such as "Billy Jack", "U Turn", "Waiting to Exhale", "Just One of the Guys", "Can't Buy Me Love", "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", "The Scorpion King", "The Banger Sisters", "Used Cars", and "Raising Arizona" have been made there (as have many Westerns). The 1993 science fiction movie "Fire in the Sky", based on a reported alien abduction in the town of Snowflake, was set in Snowflake. It was filmed in the Oregon towns of Oakland, Roseburg, and Sutherlin.


title: Arizona

text: The 1974 film "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", for which Ellen Burstyn won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and also starring Kris Kristofferson, was set in Tucson. The climax of the 1977 Clint Eastwood film "The Gauntlet" takes place in downtown Phoenix. The final segments of the 1984 film "Starman" take place at Meteor Crater outside Winslow. The Jeff Foxworthy comedy documentary movie "" was filmed almost entirely at the Dodge Theatre. Some of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film "Psycho" was shot in Phoenix, the ostensible home town of the main character.


title: Arizona

text: Some of the television shows filmed or set in Arizona include "The New Dick Van Dyke Show", "Medium", "Alice", "The First 48", "Insomniac with Dave Attell", "Cops", and "America's Most Wanted". The TV sitcom "Alice", which was based on the movie was set in Phoenix. "Twilight" had passages set in Phoenix at the beginning and the end of the film.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona is prominently featured in the lyrics of many Country and Western songs, such as Jamie O'Neal's hit ballad "There Is No Arizona". George Strait's "Oceanfront Property" uses "ocean front property in Arizona" as a metaphor for a sucker proposition. The line "see you down in Arizona Bay" is used in a Tool song in reference to the possibility (expressed as a "hope" by comedian Bill Hicks) that Southern California will one day fall into the ocean. Glen Campbell, a notable resident, popularized the song "By The Time I Get To Phoenix".


title: Arizona

text: "Arizona" was the title of a popular song recorded by Mark Lindsay. Arizona is mentioned by the hit song "Take It Easy", written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey and performed by the Eagles. Arizona is also mentioned in the Beatles' song "Get Back", credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; McCartney sings: "JoJo left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some California grass." "Carefree Highway", released in 1974 by Gordon Lightfoot, takes its name from Arizona State Route 74 north of Phoenix.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona's budding music scene is helped by emerging bands, as well as some well-known artists. The Gin Blossoms, Chronic Future, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Jimmy Eat World, Caroline's Spine, and others began their careers in Arizona. Also, a number of punk and rock bands got their start in Arizona, including JFA, The Feederz, Sun City Girls, The Meat Puppets, The Maine, The Summer Set, and more recently Authority Zero and Digital Summer.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona also has many singers and other musicians. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Michelle Branch is from Sedona. Chester Bennington, the former lead vocalist of Linkin Park, and mash-up artist DJ Z-Trip are both from Phoenix. One of Arizona's better known musicians is shock rocker Alice Cooper, who helped define the genre. Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of the bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer, calls the town of Cornville home.


title: Arizona

text: Other notable singers include country singers Dierks Bentley and Marty Robbins, folk singer Katie Lee, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, CeCe Peniston, Rex Allen, 2007 "American Idol" winner Jordin Sparks, and Linda Ronstadt.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona is also known for its heavy metal scene, which is centered in and around Phoenix. In the early to mid-1990s, it included bands such as Job for a Cowboy, Knights of the Abyss, Greeley Estates, Eyes Set To Kill, blessthefall, The Word Alive, The Dead Rabbitts, and Abigail Williams. The band Soulfly calls Phoenix home and Megadeth lived in Phoenix for about a decade. Beginning in and around 2009, Phoenix began to host a burgeoning


title: Arizona

text: desert rock and sludge metal underground, (ala' Kyuss in 1990s California) led by bands like Wolves of Winter, Asimov, and Dead Canyon.


title: Arizona

text: American composer Elliott Carter composed his first String Quartet (1950–51) while on sabbatical (from New York) in Arizona. The quartet won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards and is now a staple of the string quartet repertoire.


title: Arizona

text: State Farm Stadium hosted Super Bowl XLII on February 3, 2008, and Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, 2015. The stadium is also scheduled to host Super Bowl LVII tentatively scheduled for February 12, 2023.


title: Arizona

text: Due to its numerous golf courses, Arizona is home to several stops on the PGA Tour, most notably the Phoenix Open, held at the TPC of Scottsdale, and the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Marana.


title: Arizona

text: Auto racing is another sport known in the state. Phoenix Raceway in Avondale is home to NASCAR race weekends twice a year. Firebird International Raceway near Chandler is home to drag racing and other motorsport events.


title: Arizona

text: College sports are also prevalent in Arizona. The Arizona State Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats belong to the Pac-12 Conference while the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks compete in the Big Sky Conference and the Grand Canyon Antelopes compete in the Western Athletic Conference. The rivalry between Arizona State Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats predates Arizona's statehood, and is the oldest rivalry in the NCAA. The Territorial Cup, first awarded in 1889 and certified as the oldest trophy in college football, is awarded to the winner of the annual football game between the two schools.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona also hosts several college football bowl games. The Fiesta Bowl, originally held at Sun Devil Stadium, is now held at State Farm Stadium in Glendale. The Fiesta Bowl is part of the new College Football Playoff (CFP). University of Phoenix Stadium was also home to the 2007 and 2011 BCS National Championship Games.


title: Arizona

text: State Farm Stadium hosted the Final Four of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in 2017 and is scheduled to host it again in 2024.


title: Arizona

text: Arizona is a popular location for Major League Baseball spring training, as it is the site of the Cactus League. Spring training was first started in Arizona in 1947 when Brewers owner Veeck sold them in 1945 but went onto purchase the Cleveland Indians in 1946. He decided to train the Cleveland Indians in Tucson and convinced the New York Giants to give Phoenix a try. Thus the Cactus League was born.


title: Arizona

text: On March 9, 1995, Arizona was awarded a franchise to begin to play for the 1998 season. A $130million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball and on January 16, 1997, the Diamondbacks were officially voted into the National League.


title: Arizona

text: Since their debut, the Diamondbacks have won five National League West titles, one National League Championship pennant, and the 2001 World Series.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Mena'em Fayed (; , 17 April 1955 – 31 August 1997), better known as Dodi Fayed ( ), was an Egyptian film producer and the son of billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed. He was the romantic partner of Diana, Princess of Wales, when they both were killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Fayed was born in Alexandria and was the eldest son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods department store. He was the half-brother of Omar Fayed, Camilla, Karim, and Jasmine Fayed. Dodi's father was also the former owner of Fulham Football Club and the Hôtel Ritz Paris. Dodi's mother was Saudi Arabian author Samira Khashoggi, the daughter of Muhammad Khashoggi and sister of Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Fayed was a student at Collège Saint Marc before attending the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland. He also briefly attended Sandhurst. After completing his education, he was an attaché at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in London. He was the first cousin of the late "Washington Post" Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Through his family's production company, Allied Stars, Fayed was an executive producer of the films "Chariots of Fire", "Breaking Glass", "F/X", "F/X2", "Hook", and "The Scarlet Letter," and an executive creative consultant for "". He also worked for his father on Harrods' marketing.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: In July 1997, Fayed became romantically involved with Diana, Princess of Wales. Earlier that summer, he was engaged to an American model, Kelly Fisher, and bought a house in Malibu, California, for himself and Fisher with money from his father. Fisher subsequently said Fayed jilted her for Diana and announced that she was filing a breach of contract suit against him, saying he had "led her emotionally all the way up to the altar and abandoned her when they were almost there," and that he "threw her love away in a callous way with no regard for her whatsoever". She dropped the lawsuit shortly after Fayed's death.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: In the early hours of 31 August 1997, Diana and Fayed were killed in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma underpass in Paris. They had stopped in Paris "en route" to London after spending nine days on holiday in the French and Italian Rivieras aboard his family's yacht, the "Jonikal". Neither was wearing a seat belt. The only survivor of the crash was bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who was seriously injured but remained conscious. Fayed was pronounced dead at the scene on his removal from the wreckage.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Investigations by French and British police concluded that their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was driving under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs; paparazzi chasing the couple are also believed to have contributed to the accident. Fayed's father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, has said that the couple "were executed by MI6 agents". Fayed's former spokesman, Michael Cole, has said that the couple became engaged before their deaths.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Fayed was originally interred in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey, but was re-interred on the grounds of the Fayed estate in Oxted, Surrey in October 1997.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: Fayed's father erected two memorials to his son and Diana at Harrods. The first, unveiled on 12 April 1998, consists of photos of them behind a pyramid-shaped display containing a wine glass still smudged with lipstick from Diana's final dinner, and a ring Fayed purchased the day before they died. The second, unveiled in 2005 and titled "Innocent Victims", is a 3-metre (10') high bronze statue of the two dancing on a beach, beneath the wings of an albatross.


title: Dodi Fayed

text: The memorials were designed by 80-year-old Bill Mitchell, a close friend of Dodi's father and architect for Harrods for more than 40 years. In January 2018, it was announced that the statue would be returned to the Al-Fayed family.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Shuhada Sadaqat (born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor on 8 December 1966; ) is an Irish singer-songwriter. Her debut album, "The Lion and the Cobra", was released in 1987 and charted internationally. Her second album, "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" received glowing reviews upon release and became her biggest success, selling over seven million copies worldwide. Its lead single, "Nothing Compares 2 U" (written by Prince), was named the number one world single in 1990 by the "Billboard" Music Awards.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: She has released ten studio albums: 1992's "Am I Not Your Girl?" and 1994's "Universal Mother" both went gold in the UK, 2000's "Faith and Courage" received gold status in Australia, and 2005's "Throw Down Your Arms" went gold in Ireland. Her work also includes songs for films, collaborations with many other artists, and appearances at charity fundraising concerts. Her 2021 memoir "Rememberings" was a best seller.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Throughout her music career she has been unabashedly honest about her spiritual journey, activism, socio-political views, as well as her trauma and mental health struggles.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 1999 she was ordained as a priest by the Latin Tridentine Church, a sect that is not recognized by the mainstream Catholic Church. She consistently speaks out on issues related to child abuse, human rights, anti-racism, organised religion, and women's rights.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 2017, O'Connor changed her name to Magda Davitt. After converting to Islam in 2018, she changed it to Shuhada' Sadaqat (). However, she continues to record and perform under her birth name.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor was born in Glenageary, County Dublin on 8 December 1966. She was named Sinéad after Sinéad de Valera, the wife of Irish President Éamon de Valera, Marie after the mother of the doctor presiding over the delivery, and Bernadette in honour of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. She is the third of five children; her siblings are novelist Joseph, Eimear, John, and Eoin.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Her parents are Sean O'Connor, a structural engineer later turned barrister and chairperson of the Divorce Action Group, and Johanna Marie O'Grady who married in 1960. In 1979 O'Connor left her mother and went to live with her father and his new wife, Viola Suiter (née Cook). At the age of 15, her shoplifting and truancy led to her being placed for eighteen months in a Magdalene asylum, the Grianán Training Centre run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity. In some ways, she thrived there, especially in the development of her writing and music, but she also chafed under the imposed conformity. Unruly students there were sometimes sent to sleep in the adjoining nursing home, an experience of which she later commented, "I have never—and probably will never—experience such panic and terror and agony over anything."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor's mother Marie died in a car accident on 10 February 1985 as she lost control of her car on an icy road and crashed into a bus, when O'Connor was eighteen.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In June 1993, O'Connor wrote a public letter in "The Irish Times" which asked people to "stop hurting" her: "If only I can fight off the voices of my parents / and gather a sense of self-esteem / Then I'll be able to REALLY sing ..." The letter repeated accusations of abuse by her parents as a child which O'Connor had made in interviews. Her brother Joseph defended their father to the newspaper but agreed regarding their mother's "extreme and violent abuse, both emotional and physical". O'Connor said that month, "Our family is very messed up. We can't communicate with each other. We are all in agony. I for one am in agony."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: One of the volunteers at Grianán was the sister of Paul Byrne, drummer for the band In Tua Nua, who heard O'Connor singing "Evergreen" by Barbra Streisand. She recorded a song with them called "Take My Hand" but they felt that at 15, she was too young to join the band. Through an ad she placed in "Hot Press" in mid-1984, she met Colm Farrelly. Together they recruited a few other members and formed a band called Ton Ton Macoute. The band moved to Waterford briefly while O'Connor attended Newtown School, but she soon dropped out of school and followed them to Dublin, where their performances received positive reviews. Their sound was inspired by Farrelly's interest in world music, though most observers thought O'Connor's singing and stage presence were the band's strongest features.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor's time as singer for Ton Ton Macoute brought her to the attention of the music industry, and she was eventually signed by Ensign Records. She also acquired an experienced manager, Fachtna O'Ceallaigh, former head of U2's Mother Records. Soon after she was signed, she embarked on her first major assignment, providing the vocals for the song "Heroine", which she co-wrote with U2's guitarist the Edge for the soundtrack to the film "Captive". O'Ceallaigh, who had been fired by U2 for complaining about them in an interview, was outspoken with his views on music and politics, and O'Connor adopted the same habits; she defended the actions of the Provisional IRA and said U2's music was "bombastic". She later retracted her IRA comments saying they were based on nonsense, and that she was "too young to understand the tense situation in Northern Ireland properly".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Her first album "The Lion and the Cobra" was "a sensation" when it was released in 1987 on Chrysalis Records, and it reached gold record status, earning a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy nomination. The single "Mandinka" was a big college radio hit in the United States, and "I Want Your (Hands on Me)" received both college and urban play in a remixed form that featured rapper MC Lyte. In her first US network television appearance, O'Connor sang "Mandinka" on "Late Night with David Letterman" in 1988. The single "Troy" was also released as a single in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands, where it reached number 5 on the Dutch Top 40 chart.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor named Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Pretenders as the artists who influenced her on her debut album.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 1989 O'Connor joined frontman Matt Johnson as a guest vocalist on the band's album "Mind Bomb", which spawned the duet "Kingdom of Rain".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Her second album – 1990's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" – gained considerable attention and mostly positive reviews: it was rated "second best album of the year" by the "NME". She was praised for her voice and her original songs. She was also noted for her appearance: her trademark shaved head, often angry expression, and sometimes shapeless or unusual clothing.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: The album "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" featured Marco Pirroni and Kevin Mooney, of Adam and the Ants fame, and contained her international breakthrough hit "Nothing Compares 2 U", a song written by Prince and originally recorded and released by a side project of his, the Family.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Hank Shocklee, producer for Public Enemy, remixed the album's next single, "The Emperor's New Clothes", for a 12-inch that was coupled with the Celtic funk of "I Am Stretched on Your Grave". Pre-dating but included on "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" was also "Jump in the River", which originally appeared on the "Married to the Mob" soundtrack; the 12-inch version of the single had included a remix featuring performance artist Karen Finley. Also in 1990, O'Connor starred in a small independent Irish movie "Hush-a-Bye Baby" directed in Derry by Margo Harkin.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 1990, she joined many other guests for former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' massive performance of "The Wall" in Berlin. (In 1996, she would guest on "Broken China", a solo album by Richard Wright of Pink Floyd.) In 1991, her take on Elton John's "Sacrifice" was acclaimed as one of the best efforts on the tribute album "".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 1990, she contributed a cover of "You Do Something to Me" to the Cole Porter tribute/AIDS fundraising album "Red Hot + Blue" produced by the Red Hot Organization. "Red Hot + Blue" was followed by the release of "Am I Not Your Girl?", an album of standards and torch songs that she had listened to while growing up. The album received mixed-to-poor reviews, and was a commercial disappointment in light of the success of her previous work.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Also in 1990, she was criticised after she stated that she would not perform if the United States national anthem was played before one of her concerts. Frank Sinatra threatened to "kick her in the ass". After receiving four Grammy Award nominations, she withdrew her name from consideration. Although nominated for the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist (which she won) she did not attend the awards ceremony, but did accept the Irish IRMA in February 1991.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: She spent the following months studying Bel canto singing with teacher Frank Merriman at the Parnell School of Music. In an interview with "The Guardian" published 3 May 1993 she reported that her singing lessons with Merriman were the only therapy she was receiving, describing Merriman as "the most amazing teacher in the universe."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Also in 1992, she contributed backing vocals on the track "Come Talk To Me", and shared vocals on the single "Blood of Eden" from the studio album "Us" by Peter Gabriel. Gabriel invited her to join his ongoing Secret World Tour in May 1993, to sing these songs and more in an elaborate stage setting. O'Connor traveled and performed as a guest artist. She was seen at Gabriel's side at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards in September. While in Los Angeles, she took too many sleeping pills, inciting media conjecture about a suicide attempt. She said she "was in a bad way emotionally at the time, but it wasn't a suicide attempt." She left the tour suddenly, causing Gabriel to scramble for a replacement singer. Decades later, she wrote in her memoir "Rememberings" that she left Gabriel because he treated her casually, and would not make a commitment.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: The 1993 soundtrack to the film "In the Name of the Father" featured O'Connor's "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart", with significant contributions from U2 frontman Bono.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Her more conventional "Universal Mother" album (1994) did not succeed in restoring her mass appeal; however, the music videos for the first and second singles, "Fire on Babylon" and "Famine", were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. She toured with Lollapalooza in 1995, but dropped out when she became pregnant. The "Gospel Oak" EP followed in 1997, and featured songs based in an acoustic setting.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 1994, she appeared in "", also known as "Daltrey Sings Townshend". This was a two-night concert at Carnegie Hall produced by Roger Daltrey of the Who in celebration of his 50th birthday. A CD and a VHS video of the concert were issued in 1994, followed by a DVD in 1998.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 1998, she worked again with the Red Hot Organization to co-produce and perform on "Red Hot + Rhapsody".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: "Faith and Courage" was released in 2000, including the single "No Man's Woman", and featured contributions from Wyclef Jean of the Fugees and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Her 2002 album, "Sean-Nós Nua", marked a departure in that O'Connor interpreted or, in her own words, "sexed up" traditional Irish folk songs, including several in the Irish language. In "Sean-Nós Nua", she covered a well-known Canadian folk song, "Peggy Gordon", interpreted as a song of lesbian, rather than heterosexual, love. In her documentary, "Song of Hearts Desire", she stated that her inspiration for the song was her friend, a lesbian who sang the song to lament the loss of her partner.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 2003, she contributed a track to the Dolly Parton tribute album "", a cover of Parton's "Dagger Through the Heart". That same year, she also featured on three songs of Massive Attack's album "100th Window" before releasing her double album, "She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty". This compilation contained one disc of demos and previously unreleased tracks and one disc of a live concert recording. Directly after the album's release, O'Connor announced that she was retiring from music.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: "Collaborations", a compilation album of guest appearances, was released in 2005—featuring tracks recorded with Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Jah Wobble, Terry Hall, Moby, Bomb the Bass, the Edge, U2, and The The.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Ultimately, after a brief period of inactivity and a bout with fibromyalgia, her retirement proved to be short-lived. O'Connor stated in an interview with "Harp magazine" that she had only intended to retire from making mainstream pop/rock music, and after dealing with her fibromyalgia she chose to move into other musical styles. The reggae album "Throw Down Your Arms" appeared in late 2005.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: On 8 November 2006, O'Connor performed seven songs from her upcoming album "Theology" at The Sugar Club in Dublin. Thirty fans were given the opportunity to win pairs of tickets to attend along with music industry critics. The performance was released in 2008 as "Live at the Sugar Club" deluxe CD/DVD package sold exclusively on her website.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor released two songs from her album "Theology" to download for free from her official website: "If You Had a Vineyard" and "Jeremiah (Something Beautiful)". The album, a collection of covered and original Rastafari spiritual songs, was released in June 2007. The first single from the album, the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber classic "I Don't Know How to Love Him", was released on 30 April 2007. To promote the album, O'Connor toured extensively in Europe and North America. She also appeared on two tracks of the new Ian Brown album "The World Is Yours", including the anti-war single "Illegal Attacks".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In January 2010, O'Connor performed a duet with R&B singer Mary J. Blige produced by former A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad of O'Connor's song "This Is To Mother You" (first recorded by O'Connor on her 1997 "Gospel Oak" EP). The proceeds of the song's sales were donated to the organisation GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services).


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 2012 the song "Lay Your Head Down", written by Brian Byrne and Glenn Close for the soundtrack of the film "Albert Nobbs" and performed by O'Connor, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 2011, O'Connor worked on recording a new album, titled "Home", to be released in the beginning of 2012, titled "How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?", with the first single being "The Wolf is Getting Married". She planned an extensive tour in support of the album but suffered a serious breakdown between December 2011 and March 2012, resulting in the tour and all other musical activities for the rest of 2012 being cancelled. O'Connor resumed touring in 2013 with The Crazy Baldhead Tour. The second single "4th and Vine" was released on 18 February 2013.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In February 2014, it was revealed that O'Connor had been recording a new album of original material, titled "The Vishnu Room", consisting of romantic love songs. In early June 2014, it O'Connor's new album was retitled "I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss", with an 11 August release date. The title derives from the Ban Bossy campaign that took place earlier the same year. The album's first single is entitled "Take Me to Church".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In November 2014, O'Connor's management was taken over by Simon Napier-Bell and Björn de Water. On 15 November, O'Connor joined the charity supergroup Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording a new version of the track "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, to raise money for the West African Ebola virus epidemic.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: On 4 June 2021, O'Connor announced her immediate retirement from the music industry. While her final studio album, "No Veteran Dies Alone", is due to be released in 2022, O'Connor stated that she would not be touring or promoting it. Announcing the news on Twitter, she said "This is to announce my retirement from touring and from working in the record business. I've gotten older and I'm tired. So it's time for me to hang up my nipple tassels, having truly given my all. NVDA in 2022 will be my last release. And there'll be no more touring or promo." Later, on 7 June, she retracted this statement, describing the original announcement as "a knee-jerk reaction" to an insensitive interview, and that she would be doing her already scheduled 2022 tour.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: On 3 October 1992, O'Connor appeared on "Saturday Night Live" as a musical guest. She sang an a cappella version of Bob Marley's "War", which she intended as a protest against sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, referring to child abuse rather than racism. She then presented a photo of Pope John Paul II to the camera while singing the word "evil", after which she tore the photo into pieces, said "Fight the real enemy", and threw the pieces towards the camera. The incident occurred nine years before John Paul II acknowledged the sexual abuse within the Church.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: "Saturday Night Live" had no foreknowledge of O'Connor's plan; during the dress rehearsal, she held up a photo of a refugee child. NBC Vice-president of Late Night Rick Ludwin recalled that when he saw O'Connor's action, he "literally jumped out of [his] chair". "SNL" writer Paula Pell recalled personnel in the control booth discussing the cameras cutting away. The audience was completely silent, with no booing or applause; executive producer Lorne Michaels recalled that "the air went out the studio". He ordered that the applause sign not be used.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: A nationwide audience saw O'Connor's live performance, which the "New York Daily News"s cover called a "Holy Terror". NBC received more than 500 calls on Sunday and 400 more on Monday, with all but seven criticising O'Connor; the network received 4,400 calls in total. Contrary to rumour, NBC was not fined by the Federal Communications Commission for O'Connor's act, as the FCC has no regulatory power over such behaviour. NBC did not edit the performance out of the West coast tape-delayed broadcast that night. , NBC broadcasts reruns of the episode using footage from the dress rehearsal.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: During his opening monologue the following week, Catholic-raised host Joe Pesci held up the photo, explaining that he had taped it back together, to huge applause. Pesci also said that if it had been his show, "I would have gave [sic] her such a smack".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In a 2002 interview with "Salon", when asked if she would change anything about the "SNL" appearance, O'Connor replied, "Hell, no!" In her 2021 book "Rememberings", O'Connor said of the incident: "Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: When Catholic-raised Madonna appeared later that season on "SNL", after singing "Bad Girl", she held up a photo of Joey Buttafuoco and, saying "fight the real enemy", tore it up. Madonna also roundly attacked O'Connor in the press for the incident, telling the "Irish Times": "I think there is a better way to present her ideas rather than ripping up an image that means a lot to other people." She added, "If she is against the Roman Catholic Church and she has a problem with them, I think she should talk about it." "The New York Times" called it "professional jealousy" and wrote:


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Two weeks after the "Saturday Night Live" appearance, she was set to perform "I Believe in You" at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute concert in Madison Square Garden. She was greeted by a thundering mixture of cheers and jeers. During the booing, Kris Kristofferson told her not to "let the bastards get you down", to which she replied, "I'm not down." The noise eventually became so loud that O'Connor saw no point in starting the scheduled song. She called for the keyboard player to stop and the microphone to be turned up, and then screamed over the audience with an improvised, shouted rendition of "War", which she stopped just after mentioning child abuse, emphasizing the point of her previous action. She then looked straight to the audience for a second and left the stage. Kristofferson then comforted her, as she cried.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In January 1995, O'Connor made an on the British late-night television programme "After Dark" during an episode about sexual abuse and the Catholic church in Ireland. The discussion included a Dominican friar and another representative of the Catholic church, along with former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. Host Helena Kennedy described the event:


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor published an open letter, on her own website, to American singer and actress Miley Cyrus on 2 October 2013 in which she warned Cyrus of the treatment of women in the music industry and alleged that sexuality is a factor in this, which was in response to Cyrus' music video for her song "Wrecking Ball". O'Connor stated:


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Speaking about her relationship with Prince in an interview with Norwegian station NRK in November 2014 she said, "I did meet him a couple of times. We didn't get on at all. In fact we had a punch-up." She continued: "He summoned me to his house after 'Nothing Compares 2U'. I made it without him. I’d never met him. He summoned me to his house – and it's foolish to do this to an Irish woman – he said he didn't like me saying bad words in interviews. So I told him to fuck off...He got quite violent. I had to escape out of his house at 5 in the morning. He packed a bigger punch than mine." In a 2004 interview with Graham Norton, O'Connor claimed that the story was "much exaggerated by the press" and referred to him as "a sweet guy". In her 2021 memoir "Rememberings", O'Connor described her meeting with Prince in detail, which ranged from having his butler serve soup repeatedly despite no desire for soup to hitting her with a hard object placed in a pillowcase after wanting a pillow fight to stalking her with his car after she left the mansion.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: After her conversion to Islam, O'Connor called those who were not Muslims "disgusting" and criticised Christian and Jewish theologians on Twitter in November 2018. She wrote: "What I'm about to say is something so racist I never thought my soul could ever feel it. But truly I never wanna spend time with white people again (if that's what non-muslims are called). Not for one moment, for any reason. They are disgusting."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Later that month, O'Connor stated that her remarks were made in an attempt to force Twitter to close down her account. In September 2019, she apologised for the remarks, saying "They were not true at the time and they are not true now. I was triggered as a result of islamophobia dumped on me. I apologize for hurt caused. That was one of many crazy tweets lord knows."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In 2017, she changed her legal name to Magda Davitt, saying in an interview that she wished to be "free of the patriarchal slave names. Free of the parental curses." On her conversion to Islam in October 2018, she adopted the name Shuhada, and before mid-2019 also changed her surname from Davitt to Sadaqat.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: While her shaved head was initially an assertion against traditional views of women, years later, O'Connor said she had begun to grow her hair back, but that after being asked if she was Enya, O'Connor shaved it off again. "I don't feel like me unless I have my hair shaved. So even when I'm an old lady, I'm going to shave it."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor has had four children and has been married four times. She had her first son, Jake, with her first husband, music producer John Reynolds, who co-produced several of her albums, including "Universal Mother". Reynolds and O'Connor married in 1987. In 1991, O'Connor had an abortion after things did not work out with the father. She later wrote the song "My Special Child" about the experience.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Soon after the birth of her daughter Roisin in 1995, O'Connor and the girl's father, Irish journalist John Waters, began a long custody battle that ended with O'Connor agreeing to let Roisin live in Dublin with Waters. In mid-2001, O'Connor married British journalist Nick Sommerlad; the marriage ended in 2004. She had her third child, son Shane, in 2004 with musician Donal Lunny. In 2006, she had her fourth child, Yeshua Francis Neil Bonadio, whose father is Frank Bonadio.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor was married a third time on 22 July 2010, to longtime friend and collaborator Steve Cooney, and in late March 2011, made the decision to separate. Her fourth marriage was to Irish therapist Barry Herridge. They wed on 9 December 2011, in Las Vegas, but their marriage ended after having "lived together for 7 days only". The following week, on 3 January 2012, O'Connor issued a further string of internet comments to the effect that the couple had re-united.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: On 7 January 2022, two days after her 17-year-old son Shane was reported missing from Newbridge, County Kildare, he was found dead by the police in Bray, County Wicklow. O'Connor stated that her son, custody of whom she lost in 2013, had been on "suicide watch" at Tallaght Hospital, and had "ended his earthly struggle". O'Connor criticised Ireland's family services agency, Tusla, and the national health authority, the HSE, with regard to their handling of her son's case. Three days later, O'Connor apologised to Tusla, saying "Ok, I’m gonna do the right thing here and apologise for my lashing out. Tusla are working with very limited resources. They loved Shane. They are broken-hearted. They are human. I am sorry I have upset them." She added, "Tusla did their best. We all did: and I am deeply sorry to have blamed anyone." In January 2022, a week after her son's suicide, she was hospitalised on her own volition following a series of tweets in which she indicated she was going to take her own life.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: On a 4 October 2007, broadcast of "The Oprah Winfrey Show", O'Connor disclosed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday on 8 December 1999. Then, on "" of 9 February 2014, O'Connor said that she had received three "second opinions" and was told by all three that she was not bipolar.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: She has also been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In August 2015, she announced that she was to undergo a hysterectomy after suffering with gynaecological problems for over three years. O'Connor would later blame the hospital's refusal to administer hormonal replacement therapy after the operation as the main reason for her mental health issues in the subsequent years, stating "I was flung into surgical menopause. Hormones were everywhere. I became very suicidal. I was a basket case."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Having smoked cannabis for 30 years, O'Connor went to a rehabilitation center in 2016, to end her addiction. O'Connor is an agoraphobic.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In August 2017, O'Connor posted a 12-minute video on her Facebook page in which she stated that she has felt alone since losing custody of her 13-year-old son, Shane, that for the prior two years she had wanted to kill herself, with only her doctor and psychiatrist "keeping her alive". The month after her Facebook post, O'Connor appeared on the American television talk show "Dr. Phil" on the show's 16th season debut episode. According to Dr. Phil, O'Connor wanted to do the interview because she wanted to "destigmatize mental illness," noting the prevalence of mental health issues among musicians. Shane died in January 2022. A week later, following a series of tweets in which she indicated that she was going to kill herself, O'Connor was hospitalised.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In a 2000 interview in "Curve", O'Connor commented, "I'm a dyke... although I haven't been very open about that and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a big lesbian mule. But I actually am a dyke." However, soon after in an interview in "The Independent", she stated, "I believe it was overcompensating of me to declare myself a lesbian. It was not a publicity stunt. I was trying to make someone else feel better. And have subsequently caused pain for myself. I am not in a box of any description." In a magazine article and in a programme on RTÉ ("Ryan Confidential", broadcast on RTÉ on 29 May 2003), she stated that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she has had three relationships with women.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor is a vocal supporter of a united Ireland, and called on the left-wing republican Sinn Féin party to be "braver". In December 2014 it was reported O'Connor had joined Sinn Féin. O'Connor has called for the "demolition" of the Irish Republic and its replacement with a new, united country. She has also called for key Sinn Féin politicians like Gerry Adams to step down because "they remind people of violence", referring to the Troubles.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In a 2015 interview with the BBC, O'Connor wished that Ireland had remained under British rule (which ended after the Irish War of Independence, except for Northern Ireland), because the church took over the country instead. Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, O'Connor wrote on Facebook "Ireland is officially no longer owned by Britain".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In the late 1990s, Bishop Michael Cox of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church (an Independent Catholic group not in communion with the Catholic Church) ordained O'Connor as a priest. The Roman Catholic Church considers ordination of women to be invalid and asserts that a person attempting the sacrament of ordination upon a woman incurs excommunication. The bishop had contacted her to offer ordination following her appearance on the RTÉ's "Late Late Show," during which she told the presenter, Gay Byrne, that had she not been a singer, she would have wished to have been a Catholic priest. After her ordination, she indicated that she wished to be called "Mother Bernadette Mary".


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In August 2018, via an open letter, she asked Pope Francis to excommunicate her, as she had asked of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In a July 2007 interview with "Christianity Today", O'Connor stated that she considers herself a Christian and that she believes in core Christian concepts about the Trinity and Jesus Christ. She said, "I think God saves everybody whether they want to be saved or not. So when we die, we’re all going home... I don't think God judges anybody. He loves everybody equally." In an October 2002 interview, she credited her Christian faith in giving her the strength to live through and overcome the effects of her child abuse.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: On 26 March 2010, O'Connor appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360°" to speak out about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. On 28 March 2010, she had an opinion piece published in the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post" in which she wrote about the scandal and her time in a Magdalene laundry as a teenager. Writing for the "Sunday Independent" she labelled the Vatican as "a nest of devils" and called for the establishment of an "alternative church", opining that "Christ is being murdered by liars" in the Vatican. Shortly after the election of Pope Francis she described the office of the Pope as an "anti-Christian office."


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: Asked whether from her point of view, it is therefore irrelevant who is elected to be Pope, O'Connor replied,


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: In October 2018, O'Connor converted to Islam, calling it "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey". The ceremony was conducted in Ireland by Sunni Islamic theologian Shaykh Umar Al-Qadri. She also changed her name to Shuhada' Davitt. In a message on Twitter, she thanked fellow Muslims for their support and uploaded a video of herself singing the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. She also posted photos of herself wearing a hijab.


title: Sinéad O'Connor

text: O'Connor's memoir, "Rememberings", was published in June 2021. Neil McCormick in "The Daily Telegraph" wrote that it was a "brave, wry new memoir" with "humour and perspective". "'The Guardian" wrote that it was a memoir "full of heart, humour and remarkable generosity".


The 2012 United States presidential election was the 57th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, were re-elected to a second term. They defeated the Republican ticket of businessman and former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.


title: 2012 United States presidential election

text: As the incumbent president, Obama secured the Democratic nomination without serious opposition. The Republicans experienced a competitive primary. Romney was consistently competitive in the polls and won the support of many party leaders, but he faced challenges from a number of more conservative contenders. Romney secured his party's nomination in May, defeating former Senator Rick Santorum, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Texas congressman Ron Paul, among other candidates.


text: The campaigns focused heavily on domestic issues, and debate centered largely around sound responses to the Great Recession. Other issues included long-term federal budget issues, the future of social insurance programs, and the Affordable Care Act, Obama's marquee legislative program. Foreign policy was also discussed, including the end of the Iraq War in 2011, military spending, the Iranian nuclear program, and appropriate counteractions to terrorism. Romney attacked Obama's domestic policies as ineffective and financially insolvent while Obama's campaign sought to characterize Romney as a plutocratic businessman who was out of touch with the average American. The campaign was marked by a sharp rise in fundraising, including from nominally independent Super PACs.


text: Obama defeated Romney, winning a majority of both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Obama won 332 electoral votes and 51.1% of the popular vote compared to Romney's 206 electoral votes and 47.2%. Obama was the first president ever to win a second term with fewer electoral votes and a smaller popular vote percentage, and he was the first incumbent since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 to accomplish this. On the other hand, Obama was the first two-term president since Ronald Reagan to win both his presidential bids with a majority of the nationwide popular vote (50% or more), and the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt.


text: Obama did not hold onto Indiana, North Carolina, or Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, but crucially won all 18 "blue wall" states and defeated Romney in other swing states the Republicans had won in 2000 and 2004, most notably Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. Ultimately, of the nine swing states identified by "The Washington Post" in the 2012 election, Obama won eight, losing only North Carolina. This is also the most recent presidential election in which the Democratic candidate won the states of Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, along with Maine's 2nd congressional district as well as the most recent presidential election in which the incumbent President won reelection.


text: All four major candidates for president and vice president went on to hold significant public office after this election. Obama served his second term as president and was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump, who was elected president in 2016 while Biden also served his second term as vice president and initially retired from politics but was later elected president in 2020, defeating Trump. Romney initially retired from politics and moved to Utah in 2014 but was later elected to the Senate there in 2018, succeeding Orrin Hatch, while Ryan served three more terms in the House and eventually became Speaker from 2015 until his retirement from politics in 2019.


text: In 2011, several state legislatures passed new voting laws, especially pertaining to voter identification, with the stated purpose of combating voter fraud; the laws were attacked, however, by the Democratic Party as attempts to suppress voting among its supporters and to improve the Republican Party's presidential prospects. Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia's state legislatures approved measures to shorten early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all felons from voting. Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin state legislatures passed laws requiring voters to have government-issued IDs before they could cast their ballots. This meant, typically, that people without driver's licenses or passports had to gain new forms of ID. Former President Bill Clinton denounced them, saying, "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today". He was referring to Jim Crow laws passed in southern states near the turn of the twentieth century that disenfranchised most blacks from voting and excluded them from the political process for more than six decades. Clinton said the moves would effectively disenfranchise core voter blocs that trend liberal, including college students, Blacks, and Latinos. The Obama campaign fought against the Ohio law, pushing for a petition and statewide referendum to repeal it in time for the 2012 election.


text: In addition, the Pennsylvania legislature proposed a plan to change its representation in the electoral college from the traditional winner-take-all model to a district-by-district model. As the governorship and both houses of its legislature were Republican-controlled, the move was viewed by some as an attempt to reduce Democratic chances. Ultimately they did not do it, leaving their winner take all format intact as of 2020.


text: With an incumbent president running for re-election against token opposition, the race for the Democratic nomination was largely uneventful. The nomination process consisted of primaries and caucuses, held by the 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Democrats Abroad. Additionally, high-ranking party members known as superdelegates each received one vote in the convention. A few of the primary challengers surpassed the president's vote total in individual counties in several of the seven contested primaries, though none made a significant impact in the delegate count. Running unopposed everywhere else, Obama cemented his status as the Democratic presumptive nominee on April 3, 2012, by securing the minimum number of pledged delegates needed to obtain the nomination.


text: Candidates with considerable name recognition who entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in the early stages of the primary campaign included U.S. Representative and former Libertarian nominee Ron Paul, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who co-chaired John McCain's campaign in 2008, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the runner-up for the nomination in the 2008 cycle, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.


text: The first debate took place on May 5, 2011, in Greenville, South Carolina, with businessman Herman Cain, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum participating. Another debate took place a month later, with Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann participating, and Gary Johnson excluded. A total of thirteen debates were held before the Iowa caucuses.


text: The first major event of the campaign was the Ames Straw Poll, which took place in Iowa on August 13, 2011. Michele Bachmann won the straw poll (this ultimately proved to be the acme of her campaign). Pawlenty withdrew from the race after a poor showing in the straw poll, as did Thaddeus McCotter, the only candidate among those who qualified for the ballot who was refused entrance into the debate.


text: It became clear at around this point in the nomination process that while Romney was considered to be the likely nominee by the Republican establishment, a large segment of the conservative primary electorate found him to be too moderate for their political views. As a result, a number of potential "anti-Romney" candidates were put forward, including future President Donald Trump, former Alaska Governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Texas Governor Rick Perry, the last of whom decided to run in August 2011. Perry did poorly in the debates, however, and Herman Cain and then Newt Gingrich came to the fore in October and November.


text: Due to a number of scandals, Cain withdrew just before the end of the year, after having gotten on the ballot in several states. Around the same time, Johnson, who had been able to get into only one other debate, withdrew to seek the Libertarian Party nomination.


text: For the first time in modern Republican Party history, three different candidates won the first three state contests in January (the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary, and the South Carolina primary). Although Romney had been expected to win in at least Iowa and New Hampshire, Rick Santorum won the non-binding poll at caucus sites in Iowa by 34 votes, as near as could be determined from the incomplete tally, earning him a declaration as winner by state party leaders, although vote totals were missing from eight precincts. The election of county delegates at the caucuses would eventually lead to Ron Paul earning 22 of the 28 Iowa delegates to the Republican National Convention. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina by a surprisingly large margin, and Romney won only in New Hampshire.


text: A number of candidates dropped out at this point in the nomination process. Bachmann withdrew after finishing sixth in the Iowa caucuses, Huntsman withdrew after coming in third in New Hampshire, and Perry withdrew when polls showed him drawing low numbers in South Carolina.


text: Santorum, who had previously run an essentially one-state campaign in Iowa, was able to organize a national campaign after his surprising victory there. He unexpectedly carried three states in a row on February 7 and overtook Romney in nationwide opinion polls, becoming the only candidate in the race to effectively challenge the notion that Romney was the inevitable nominee. However, Romney won all of the other contests between South Carolina and the Super Tuesday primaries, and regained his first-place status in nationwide opinion polls by the end of February.


text: The Super Tuesday primaries took place on March 6. Romney carried six states, Santorum carried three, and Gingrich won only in his home state of Georgia. Throughout the rest of March, 266 delegates were allocated in 12 events, including the territorial contests and the first local conventions that allocated delegates (Wyoming's county conventions). Santorum won Kansas and three Southern primaries, but he was unable to make any substantial gain on Romney, who became a formidable frontrunner after securing more than half of the delegates allocated in March.


text: On April 10, Santorum suspended his campaign due to a variety of reasons, such as a low delegate count, unfavorable polls in his home state of Pennsylvania, and his daughter's health, leaving Mitt Romney as the undisputed front-runner for the presidential nomination and allowing Gingrich to claim that he was "the last conservative standing" in the campaign for the nomination. After disappointing results in the April 24 primaries (finishing second in one state, third in three, and fourth in one), Gingrich dropped out on May 2 in a move that was seen as an effective end to the contest for the nomination. After Gingrich's spokesman announced his upcoming withdrawal, the Republican National Committee declared Romney the party's presumptive nominee. Ron Paul officially remained in the race, but he stopped campaigning on May 14 to focus on state conventions.


text: On May 29, after winning the Texas primary, Romney had received a sufficient number of delegates to clinch the party's nomination with the inclusion of unpledged delegates. After winning the June 5 primaries in California and several other states, Romney had received more than enough pledged delegates to clinch the nomination without counting unpledged delegates, making the June 26 Utah Primary, the last contest of the cycle, purely symbolic. CNN's final delegate estimate, released on July 27, 2012, put Romney at 1,462 pledged delegates and 62 unpledged delegates, for a total estimate of 1,524 delegates. No other candidate had unpledged delegates. The delegate estimates for the other candidates were Santorum at 261 delegates, Paul at 154, Gingrich at 142, Bachmann at 1, Huntsman at 1, and all others at 0.


text: On August 28, 2012, delegates at the Republican National Convention officially named Romney the party's presidential nominee. Romney formally accepted the delegates' nomination on August 30, 2012.


text: Four other parties nominated candidates that had ballot access or write-in access to at least 270 electoral votes, the minimum number of votes needed in the 2012 election to win the presidency through a majority of the electoral college.


text: All other candidates were on the ballots of fewer than 10 states, 100 electors, and less than 20% of voters nationwide.


text: The United States presidential election of 2012 broke new records in financing, fundraising, and negative campaigning. Through grassroots campaign contributions, online donations, and Super PACs, Obama and Romney raised a combined total of more than $2 billion. Super PACs constituted nearly one-fourth of the total financing, with most coming from pro-Romney PACs. Obama raised $690 million through online channels, beating his record of $500 million in 2008. Most of the advertising in the 2012 presidential campaign was decidedly negative—80% of Obama's ads and 84% of Romney's ads were negative. The tax-exempt non-profit Americans for Prosperity, a so-called "outside group", that is, a political advocacy group that is not a political action committee or super-PAC, ran a television advertising campaign opposing Obama described by "The Washington Post" as "early and relentless". Americans for Prosperity spent $8.4 million in swing states on television advertisements denouncing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 loan guarantee to Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar panels that went bankrupt, an advertising campaign described by "The Wall Street Journal" in November 2011 as "perhaps the biggest attack on Mr. Obama so far".


text: The Commission on Presidential Debates held four debates during the last weeks of the campaign: three presidential and one vice-presidential. The major issues debated were the economy and jobs, the federal budget deficit, taxation and spending, the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, healthcare reform, education, social issues, immigration, and foreign policy.


text: An independent presidential debate featuring minor party candidates took place on Tuesday, October 23 at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. The debate was moderated by Larry King and organized by the Free & Equal Elections Foundation. The participants were Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green), Virgil Goode (Constitution), and Rocky Anderson (Justice). A second debate between Stein and Johnson took place on Sunday, November 4, and was moderated by Ralph Nader.


text: On the day of the election, spread betting firm Spreadex were offering an Obama Electoral College Votes spread of 296–300 to Romney's 239–243. In reality Obama's victory over Romney was far greater, winning 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. Romney lost all but one of nine battleground states, and received 47 percent of the nationwide popular vote to Obama's 51 percent.


text: Popular vote totals are from the Federal Election Commission report. The results of the electoral vote were certified by Congress on January 4, 2013.


text: The table below displays the official vote tallies by each state's Electoral College voting method. The source for the results of all states, except those that amended their official results, is the official Federal Election Commission report. The column labeled "Margin" shows Obama's margin of victory over Romney (the margin is negative for every state that Romney won).


text: Maine and Nebraska each allow for their election results votes to be split between candidates. The winner within each congressional district gets one electoral vote for the district. The winner of the statewide vote gets two additional electoral votes. In the 2012 election, all four of Maine's electoral votes were won by Obama and all five of Nebraska's electoral votes were won by Romney.


text: Red denotes states (or congressional districts that contribute an electoral vote) won by Republican Mitt Romney; blue denotes those won by Democrat Barack Obama.


text: After the networks called Ohio (the state that was arguably the most critical for Romney, as no Republican had ever won the Presidency without carrying it) for Obama at around 11:15 PM EST on Election Day, Romney was ready to concede the race, but hesitated when Karl Rove strenuously objected on Fox News to the network's decision to make that call. However, after Colorado and Nevada were called for the President (giving Obama enough electoral votes to win even if Ohio were to leave his column), in tandem with Obama's apparent lead in Florida and Virginia (both were eventually called for Obama), Romney acknowledged that he had lost and conceded at around 1:00 AM EST on November 7.


text: Despite public polling showing Romney behind Obama in the swing states of Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Hampshire, tied with Obama in Virginia, and just barely ahead of Obama in Florida, the Romney campaign said they were genuinely surprised by the loss, having believed that public polling was oversampling Democrats. The Romney campaign had already set up a transition website, and had scheduled and purchased a fireworks display to celebrate in case he won the election.


text: On November 30, 2012, it was revealed that shortly before the election, internal polling done by the Romney campaign had shown Romney ahead in Colorado and New Hampshire, tied in Iowa, and within a few points of Obama in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Ohio. In addition, the Romney campaign had assumed that they would win Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. The polls had made Romney and his campaign team so confident of their victory that Romney did not write a concession speech until Obama's victory was announced.


text: Foreign leaders reacted with both positive and mixed messages. Most world leaders congratulated and praised Barack Obama on his re-election victory. However, Venezuela and some other states had tempered reactions. Pakistan commented that Romney's defeat had made Pakistan-United States relations safer. Stock markets fell noticeably after Obama's re-election, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 each declining over two percent the day after the election.


text: The United States has a population of 50 million Hispanic and Latino Americans, 27 million of whom are citizens eligible to vote (13% of total eligible voters). Traditionally, only half of eligible Hispanic voters vote (around 7% of voters); of them, 71% voted for Barack Obama (increasing his percentage of the vote by 5%); therefore, the Hispanic vote was an important factor in Obama's re-election, since the vote difference between the two main parties was only 3.9%


text: Exit polls were conducted by Edison Research of Somerville, New Jersey, for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News.


text: Combined with the re-elections of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama's victory in the 2012 election marked only the second time in American history that three consecutive presidents were each elected to two or more full terms after the consecutive two-term presidencies of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe ending in 1820, which is the only other time "any" two-term president succeeded another. This was also the first election since 1944 in which neither of the major candidates had any military experience.


text: The 2012 election marked the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt's last two re-elections in 1940 and 1944 that a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of the popular vote in two consecutive elections. Obama was also the first president of either party to secure a majority of the popular vote in two elections since Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Obama is the third Democratic president to secure at least 51% of the vote twice, after Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Romney won the popular vote in 226 congressional districts making this the first time since 1960 that the winner of the election did not win the popular vote in a majority of the congressional districts. Romney also became the first Republican since Gerald Ford's narrow defeat to Jimmy Carter in 1976 to fail to win a presidential election while earning a minimum of 200 electoral votes. The same feat would also later repeat itself when Donald Trump lost the 2020 Presidential Election to Joe Biden with earning at least that number of electoral votes.


text: Romney lost his home state of Massachusetts, becoming the first major party presidential candidate to lose his home state since Democrat Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee to Republican George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Romney lost his home state by more than 23%, the worst losing margin for a major party candidate since John Frémont in 1856. Even worse than Frémont, Romney failed to win a single county in his home state, something last seen by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. This was the first a Republican lost his home state since Richard Nixon in 1968. In addition, since Obama carried Ryan's home state of Wisconsin, the Romney–Ryan ticket was the first major party ticket since the 1972 election to have both of its nominees lose their home states. Romney won the popular vote in every county of three states: Utah, Oklahoma, and West Virginia; Obama did so in four states: Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.


text: Romney's loss prompted the Republican National Committee to try to appeal to the American Latino population by concentrating on different approaches to immigration. These were short-lived due to activity and anger from the Republican base and may have contributed to the selection of Donald Trump as their presidential candidate four years later.


text: Gary Johnson's popular vote total set a Libertarian Party record, and his popular vote percentage was the second-best showing for a Libertarian in a presidential election, trailing only Ed Clark's in 1980. Johnson would go on to beat this record in the 2016 presidential election, winning the most votes for the Libertarian ticket in history. At the time, Green Party candidate Jill Stein's popular vote total made her the most successful female presidential candidate in a general election in United States history. This was later surpassed by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.


text: Obama's vote total was the fourth most votes received in the history of presidential elections (behind Obama's 2008 victory and both major candidates in 2020) and the most ever for a reelected president. The 2012 election marked the first time since 1988 in which no state was won by a candidate with a plurality of the state's popular vote. Furthermore, it is the only post-World War II presidential election in which no states were won by margins smaller than 30,000 votes. Obama's narrowest victories were in New Hampshire by 39,643 votes, followed by Florida by 74,309 votes. Every other presidential election in modern history has seen states narrowly won by several thousand votes. So far, this is the only presidential election in history where both the Republican and Democratic vice presidential candidates are practicing Roman Catholics. It is also the only presidential election where there are no white Protestants on either major party ticket.


text: Obama was the fourth of just four presidents in United States history to win re-election with a lower percentage of the electoral vote than in their prior elections, the other three were James Madison in 1812, Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Frank Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944. Additionally, Obama was the fifth of only five presidents to win re-election with a smaller percentage of the popular vote than in prior elections, the other four are James Madison in 1812, Andrew Jackson in 1832, Grover Cleveland in 1892, and Frank Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Tamara Faye Messner (née LaValley, formerly Bakker ; March 7, 1942 – July 20, 2007) was an American evangelist, singer, author, talk show host, and television personality. She gained notice for her work with "The PTL Club", a televangelist program she co-founded with her husband Jim Bakker in 1974. They had hosted their own puppet show series for local programming in the early 1960s; Messner also had a career as a recording artist. In 1978, she and Bakker built Heritage USA, a Christian theme park.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Messner garnered significant publicity when Jim Bakker was indicted, convicted, and imprisoned on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy in 1989, resulting in the dissolution of "The PTL Club". She divorced Bakker in 1992 and married Roe Messner. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, from which she suffered intermittently for over a decade before dying of the disease in 2007.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: During her career Messner was noted for her eccentric and glamorous persona, as well as for moral views that diverged from those of many mainstream evangelists, particularly her advocacy for LGBT persons and reaching out to HIV/AIDS patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She released three autobiographies during her lifetime, "I Gotta Be Me" in 1978, "Tammy: Telling it My Way" in 1996 and "I Will Survive and You Will Too!" in 2003.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: She was born Tamara Faye LaValley in International Falls, Minnesota, to Pentecostal preachers Rachel Minnie (née Fairchild; 1919–1992) and Carl Oliver LaValley.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Her parents were married in 1941. Shortly after she was born, a painful divorce soured her mother against other ministers, alienating her from the church. Both of her parents remarried, her mother to Fred Willard Grover, forming a large blended family, of which she was the oldest.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In 1960, she met Jim Bakker while they were students at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tammy Faye worked in a boutique for a time while Jim found work in a restaurant inside a department store in Minneapolis. They were married on April 1, 1961. The next year, they moved to South Carolina, where they began their ministry together, initially traveling around the United States; Jim preached, while Tammy sang songs and played the accordion. In 1970, she gave birth to their daughter Tammy Sue "Sissy" Bakker, and in 1975 gave birth to their son Jamie Charles Bakker.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Jim and Tammy had been involved with television from the time of their departure from Minneapolis until they moved to the Charlotte area via Virginia Beach, Virginia, where they were founding members of "The 700 Club". While in Portsmouth, they were hosts of the popular children's show "Jim and Tammy". They then created a puppet ministry for children on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which ran from 1964 to 1973.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Messner co-founded (with Bakker) "The PTL Club" (Praise The Lord) in 1974, a televangelist Christian news program that they initially hosted in an abandoned furniture store in Charlotte. The series mixed "glitzy entertainment with down-home family values" and preached a "'prosperity gospel' which put a divine seal of approval on both the growing affluence of American evangelicals and the showy lifestyles of their television ministers." "The PTL Club" soon grew into its own network and a corporate enterprise within a year of its founding, generating $120 million annually in the 1970s. In 1978, Messner and Bakker used $200 million of PTL funds to build Heritage USA, a Christian retreat and theme park that, at the time, ranked alongside Disney World and Disneyland as one of the most popular theme parks in the United States.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Throughout the series, Messner provided a sentimental and emotive touch to stories, and also often sang Christian songs. She was also noted for her candid discussion of topics considered taboo amongst many of her Evangelist peers, ranging from penile implants to acceptance and compassion for the LGBT community.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s, Messner emotionally interviewed Steven Pieters, a gay Christian minister with AIDS on "Tammy's House Party," a segment of "The PTL Club", during which they discussed his sexuality, coming out, diagnosis with AIDS, and the death of his partner. During the program, Messner emotionally addressed her viewership, saying: "How sad that we as Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth, we who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care." Throughout the AIDS epidemic, Messner advocated for viewers of "The PTL Club" to follow Christ and show compassion and pray for the ill, and also invited drug addicts onto the show to interview them about substance abuse. In 1987, it was reported that Messner was herself being treated for a prescription drug addiction.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: The Bakkers' control of PTL collapsed in 1987 after revelations that $287,000 had been paid from the organization to buy the silence of Jessica Hahn, who claims Jim Bakker raped her. In his 1997 book, "I Was Wrong", Bakker disputed Hahn's account, claiming that he was "set up" and that their sex was consensual. The revelations invited scrutiny of the Bakkers, and charges made about their opulent lives, including media reports of an air-conditioned doghouse at their Tega Cay, South Carolina, lakefront parsonage as well as gold-plated bathroom fixtures, dominated newscasts in the 1980s. When asked about her income, Messner told reporters in 1986: "We don't get what Johnny Carson makes, and we work a lot harder than him." The couple's Tega Cay home was later sold by the ministry and burned to the ground not long thereafter. Bakker wrote in his book "I Was Wrong" that he watched the home burn on live television while incarcerated. The "Charlotte Observer" subsequently ran exposés of PTL's finances and management practices. PTL went bankrupt after being taken over by Lynchburg, Virginia-based Baptist televangelist Jerry Falwell, who offered to step in following the scandals in 1988.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Messner stood by Bakker through the scandal, including several instances when she cried on camera. In 1989 Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison on 24 fraud and conspiracy counts (he served 5). In 1992, while Bakker was still in prison, Messner filed for divorce, saying in a letter to the New Covenant Church in Orlando, Florida: "For years I have been pretending that everything is all right, when in fact I hurt all the time... I cannot pretend anymore."


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: On October 3, 1993, she married property developer Roe Messner in Rancho Mirage, California, after he divorced his own wife. They moved to the Charlotte suburb of Matthews, North Carolina. Tammy and Roe were neighbors to Christian recording star and friend David L Cook. Roe, who had a contracting business, Messner Enterprises in Andover, Kansas, had built much of Heritage USA as well as many large churches and had been a family friend to the Bakkers throughout the PTL years. Roe was the one who produced the money for the $265,000 payment to Hahn, later billing PTL for work never completed on the Jerusalem Amphitheater at Heritage USA. In the Bakkers' fraud trial, Roe testified for Bakker's defense saying that Falwell had sent Messner to the Bakker home in Palm Springs, California, to make an offer to "keep quiet."


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In 1996, Roe was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, having claimed to owe nearly $30 million to over 300 creditors in 1990. As he faced sentencing in 1996, he said he could not afford to treat his prostate cancer because he lacked health insurance. He was sentenced to and served 27 months in prison.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: The same year, Messner published her autobiography, "Tammy: Telling It My Way", and she co-hosted a TV talk show titled "The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show" with Jim J. Bullock.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: As her first husband was jailed and Messner then became diagnosed with colon cancer, she re-entered the public eye in a series of books, movies and television appearances.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: She appeared twice on "The Drew Carey Show" in 1996 and 1999, playing the mother of character Mimi Bobeck (Kathy Kinney), who was also known for wearing excessive amounts of makeup. On September 11, 2003, Messner published a new autobiography, "I Will Survive... and You Will, Too!", in which she described her battles with cancer and her life with Roe Messner.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: She was the subject of a documentary titled "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" (2000), narrated by RuPaul, and a follow-up film titled "Tammy Faye: Death Defying" (2004).


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Despite her background in Christian fundamentalism, Messner became a gay icon after parting from PTL, appearing in Gay Pride marches with figures such as Lady Bunny and Bruce Vilanch. Unlike many American Christian fundamentalists she "had long refused to denounce homosexuals" and also expressed compassion toward, and urged support for Americans with HIV/AIDS when it was still a much feared and unknown disease. In the 1980s she interviewed an AIDS patient on her program, "making an impassioned plea to Christians to love and accept their gay brethren." She was benevolently referred to as "the ultimate drag queen," and said in her last interview with Larry King that, "When I wentwhen we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that."


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In early 2004, she appeared on the second season of the VH1 reality television series "The Surreal Life". The show chronicled a twelve-day period wherein she, Ron Jeremy, Vanilla Ice, Traci Bingham, Erik Estrada, and Trishelle Cannatella lived together in a Los Angeles house and were assigned various tasks and activities.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Together, the six put on a children's play and managed a restaurant for a day. She also attended a book signing for her best-seller, "I Will Survive... And You Will Too".


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: At the end of the show, Messner said she thought of Vanilla Ice and Trishelle Cannatella as her children and could relate to them deeply because she had similar feelings and problems when she was their age.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In July 2007, on more solid financial footing, the Messners relocated to Loch Lloyd, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City. Jim Bakker had relocated his operations to Branson, Missouri, in 2003. She told "Entertainment Tonight" they had moved to the "dream house" to be closer to Roe's children and grandchildren from his first marriage.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Messner's 11 years with cancer were highly publicized. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in March 1996, and the disease went into remission by the end of that year.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In March 2004, Messner made an appearance on "Larry King Live" and announced that she had inoperable lung cancer and would soon begin chemotherapy. She continued to receive chemotherapy throughout mid-2004. In November 2004, also on "Larry King Live", she announced that she was cancer-free once again. She described the details of her chemotherapy and continued to appear regularly on King's show.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: A television documentary of her struggle with cancer was produced in 2004. It was on King's program again that she announced in July 2005 that her cancer had returned.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In March 2006, Messner appeared again on "Larry King Live". She said she was continuing to suffer from lung cancer, which had reached stage 4, and that she was continuing to receive treatment for it. She also mentioned having difficulty swallowing food, suffering from panic attacks, and enduring substantial weight loss. As her health continued to worsen, a "Talk of the Town" article in an October 2006 issue of "The New Yorker" stated that she was dying in hospice care, and a December 2006 article in Walter Scott's column in "Parade" reported that her son Jay was "at a North Carolina hospice with his mom, [who is] gravely ill with colon cancer".


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Messner was a guest by phone on "Larry King Live" in December 2006, and said that she was receiving hospice care in her home. She appeared in her son Jay's documentary series "One Punk Under God", wherein they talked about her cancer treatments. In one episode, she required the use of oxygen in order to talk.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In May 2007, she issued a statement on her website saying that chemotherapy had stopped, and she urged her fans to continue to pray for her. The story was reported on NBC's "The Today Show", and a feature in which fans and well-wishers could post get-well messages to Tammy was added to her website.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: On July 18, 2007, Messner made her final appearance on "Larry King Live". At the time, she said she weighed 65 pounds (29.5 kg) and was unable to eat solid food. Messner's husband later said that he believed she chose to do the interview to say a final goodbye to her fans.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: On July 20, 2007, Messner died at her home in Loch Lloyd, near Kansas City, Missouri, after an eleven-year bout with cancer. She was 65 years old. A family service was held on the morning of July 21, at the Messner family plot in Waldron, Kansas. The ceremony was officiated by Rev. Randy McCain, the pastor of Open Door Community Church in Sherwood, Arkansas. According to CNN, the family requested that King officially report the news of her death. Her remains were cremated and her ashes were returned to Waldron Cemetery where they were subsequently buried.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In June 2006, a stage musical titled "The Gospel According to Tammy Faye" opened at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival and was subsequently developed as a larger professional production. The show features songs by J. T. Buck and a book by Fernando Dovalina. The musical is described as a fantasia which takes a balanced and fair look at its subject. The impetus for the show was provided by a lengthy interview that Messner gave the authors in March 2005. The musical aired in August 2006 in Portland, Oregon and Hood River, Oregon, and it was presented on stage at Houston's Alley Theatre at the end of July 2007 under direction of Les R. Wood. Industry readings presented by the Columbia Gorge Repertory Company were held at the Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2007, the cast including Tony nominee Sally Mayes and veteran Broadway performers William Youmans, Ken Land, Julie Foldesi, James T. Lane and Heather Parcells. The readings were directed by Mindy Cooper. Seth Farber provided musical direction.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: Another musical following her life, titled "Big Tent", debuted in May 2007, at off-Broadway's New World Stages, in New York City. The show features music and lyrics by Ben Cohn and Sean McDaniel, a book by Jeffery Self, and direction by Ryan J. Davis. A star-studded concert of songs from the show opened in February 2008, at New York's Metropolitan Room.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: A play about her final hours, "Tammy Faye's Final Audition" by Merri Biechler, premiered at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival in June 2015. The play takes place in a fevered dream at the end of her life, wherein she enlists the men in her life for one final TV talk show audition.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: A musical about the life of BeBe Winans, "Born for This", debuted on June 25, 2018, at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts. Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker appear as supporting characters who give BeBe and his sister CeCe their first big break as singers on "The PTL Club".


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: In the 2021 movie "The Eyes of Tammy Faye", based on the 2000 documentary of the same name, Jessica Chastain plays Tammy Faye and Andrew Garfield plays her husband Jim. "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" opened on September 17, 2021. Chastain won a Critics Choice Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.


title: Tammy Faye Messner

text: British playwright James Graham also wrote the book for a new musical about Tammy Faye, with music by Elton John and lyrics by Jake Shears. The musical, titled "Tammy Faye", opened in October 2022 at the Almeida Theatre in London, directed by Rupert Goold.


title: IP address

text: An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two main functions: network interface identification and location addressing.


title: IP address

text: Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number. However, because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP (IPv6), using 128 bits for the IP address, was standardized in 1998. IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s.


title: IP address

text: IP addresses are written and displayed in human-readable notations, such as in IPv4, and in IPv6. The size of the routing prefix of the address is designated in CIDR notation by suffixing the address with the number of significant bits, e.g., , which is equivalent to the historically used subnet mask .


title: IP address

text: The IP address space is managed globally by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and by five regional Internet registries (RIRs) responsible in their designated territories for assignment to local Internet registries, such as Internet service providers (ISPs), and other end users. IPv4 addresses were distributed by IANA to the RIRs in blocks of approximately 16.8 million addresses each, but have been exhausted at the IANA level since 2011. Only one of the RIRs still has a supply for local assignments in Africa. Some IPv4 addresses are reserved for private networks and are not globally unique.


title: IP address

text: Network administrators assign an IP address to each device connected to a network. Such assignments may be on a "static" (fixed or permanent) or "dynamic" basis, depending on network practices and software features.


title: IP address

text: An IP address serves two principal functions: it identifies the host, or more specifically its network interface, and it provides the location of the host in the network, and thus the capability of establishing a path to that host. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there."


title: IP address

text: The header of each IP packet contains the IP address of the sending host and that of the destination host.


title: IP address

text: Two versions of the Internet Protocol are in common use on the Internet today. The original version of the Internet Protocol that was first deployed in 1983 in the ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet, is Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4).


title: IP address

text: The rapid exhaustion of IPv4 address space available for assignment to Internet service providers and end-user organizations by the early 1990s, prompted the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to explore new technologies to expand the addressing capability on the Internet. The result was a redesign of the Internet Protocol which became eventually known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) in 1995.


title: IP address

text: IPv6 technology was in various testing stages until the mid-2000s when commercial production deployment commenced.


title: IP address

text: Today, these two versions of the Internet Protocol are in simultaneous use. Among other technical changes, each version defines the format of addresses differently. Because of the historical prevalence of IPv4, the generic term "IP address" typically still refers to the addresses defined by IPv4. The gap in version sequence between IPv4 and IPv6 resulted from the assignment of version 5 to the experimental Internet Stream Protocol in 1979, which however was never referred to as IPv5.


title: IP address

text: Other versions v1 to v9 were defined, but only v4 and v6 ever gained widespread use. v1 and v2 were names for TCP protocols in 1974 and 1977, as there was no separate IP specification at the time. v3 was defined in 1978, and v3.1 is the first version where TCP is separated from IP. v6 is a synthesis of several suggested versions, v6 "Simple Internet Protocol", v7 "TP/IX: The Next Internet", v8 "PIP — The P Internet Protocol", and v9 "TUBA — Tcp & Udp with Big Addresses".


title: IP address

text: IP networks may be divided into subnetworks in both IPv4 and IPv6. For this purpose, an IP address is recognized as consisting of two parts: the "network prefix" in the high-order bits and the remaining bits called the "rest field", "host identifier", or "interface identifier" (IPv6), used for host numbering within a network. The subnet mask or CIDR notation determines how the IP address is divided into network and host parts.


title: IP address

text: The term "subnet mask" is only used within IPv4. Both IP versions however use the CIDR concept and notation. In this, the IP address is followed by a slash and the number (in decimal) of bits used for the network part, also called the "routing prefix". For example, an IPv4 address and its subnet mask may be and , respectively. The CIDR notation for the same IP address and subnet is , because the first 24 bits of the IP address indicate the network and subnet.


title: IP address

text: An IPv4 address has a size of 32 bits, which limits the address space to (2) addresses. Of this number, some addresses are reserved for special purposes such as private networks (~18 million addresses) and multicast addressing (~270 million addresses).


title: IP address

text: IPv4 addresses are usually represented in dot-decimal notation, consisting of four decimal numbers, each ranging from 0 to 255, separated by dots, e.g., . Each part represents a group of 8 bits (an octet) of the address. In some cases of technical writing, IPv4 addresses may be presented in various hexadecimal, octal, or binary representations.


title: IP address

text: In the early stages of development of the Internet Protocol, the network number was always the highest order octet (most significant eight bits). Because this method allowed for only 256 networks, it soon proved inadequate as additional networks developed that were independent of the existing networks already designated by a network number. In 1981, the addressing specification was revised with the introduction of classful network architecture.


title: IP address

text: Classful network design allowed for a larger number of individual network assignments and fine-grained subnetwork design. The first three bits of the most significant octet of an IP address were defined as the "class" of the address. Three classes ("A", "B", and "C") were defined for universal unicast addressing. Depending on the class derived, the network identification was based on octet boundary segments of the entire address. Each class used successively additional octets in the network identifier, thus reducing the possible number of hosts in the higher order classes ("B" and "C"). The following table gives an overview of this now-obsolete system.


title: IP address

text: Classful network design served its purpose in the startup stage of the Internet, but it lacked scalability in the face of the rapid expansion of networking in the 1990s. The class system of the address space was replaced with Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) in 1993. CIDR is based on variable-length subnet masking (VLSM) to allow allocation and routing based on arbitrary-length prefixes. Today, remnants of classful network concepts function only in a limited scope as the default configuration parameters of some network software and hardware components (e.g. netmask), and in the technical jargon used in network administrators' discussions.


title: IP address

text: Early network design, when global end-to-end connectivity was envisioned for communications with all Internet hosts, intended that IP addresses be globally unique. However, it was found that this was not always necessary as private networks developed and public address space needed to be conserved.