Former television actress of “One Day At A Time” Mackenzie Phillips has written a tell-all autobiography entitled “High On Arrival”, which details her tumultuous history — drug abuse, rehabilitation, arrests, etc. — but the biggest and most shocking revelation is the fact that she claims to have been having consensual sex with her father, John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas.
It isn’t clear whether or not the drugs are to blame for this outcome — both Mackenzie and John were both heavy users at this point — but it’s apparent that some sort of twisted relationship had developed, during which they both felt comfortable with what they were doing. Why Mackenzie waited to long after her father’s death to come forward with this news is also unknown.
Aside from the obvious depredations of the incestual aspect, John Phillips failed as a father for his inability to protect his own daughter from his drug use, and for his additional shortcomings in providing any sort of moral template by which she could look up to him and judge her own actions against his. As parents, our biggest responsibility isn’t to love our children, it’s to teach them to be good human beings. We need to show them how to be compassionate, generous, moral, and responsible, for that’s the way to create a community of well-adjusted people that contribute to the health of society.
John Phillips had no such sense of propriety, and so failed to be anything more than a common wastrel, unfit for fatherhood at any level. If he had any strength of conviction at all, he would have been better served to disappear from Mackenzie’s life completely. As it is, it may take Mackenzie a lifetime to recover from what her father did to her, if she ever does. Thus is another life prevented from living up to its potential, to the detriment of us all.
