Prior to yesterday's airing of Oprah, reports of Mackenzie Phillips "consensual" incestuous affair with her father, the late musician John Phillips, were enough to sicken and sadden the most jaded minds.
Discussing her just-released memoir, High on Arrival, the former teen star of the 70s hit show "One Day At A Time" chronicled her fraught relationship with Papa John, which included doing drugs together (a pastime he expanded by shooting her up for the first time) and their ten-year sexual relationship, which resulted in the abortion of a child she believes may have been her father's.
And yet somehow, the very worst part of the interview resided in Mackenzie's pained, frantic gaze, and her insistence that she still loves her father.
"I think my dad was not a bad man," she told Oprah, clearly needing to believe it. "I don’t hate him. I understand that he as a very tortured man, and passed that on to me. "
These are the feelings she has for the man who virtually destroyed her life with an act that would lead to years of shame, isolation and drug abuse?
In High on Arrival, the chasm between Mackenzie's love for her father and his treatment of her are rendered in harrowing detail:
"On the eve of my wedding, my father showed up, determined to stop it. I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually I passed out on Dad's bed."
"My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father."
"Had this happened before? I didn't know. All I can say is it was the first time I was aware of it."
Everything about this passage is a heartbreak, from the action taking place to the author's need to see the man doing it as "full of love." In describing to Oprah what happened afterward, she seemed curiously docile.
"After the first time, I went to him and said, we need to talk about how you raped me. And my dad said, raped you? Don't you mean when we made love? And I thought, wow, I'm really on my own here."
And that is really the truth, isn't it? Because even after this interview, even after braving the inevitable naysayers who'll think it's a pile of lies, and the blame-the-victim lot who will say she deserved it, not to mention the countless others who will question her sanity and dignity and everything else that is questionable about this situation (and let's face it, there's A LOT), Mackenzie Phillips will still be on her own, a girl who will never understand exactly what happened to her, or why she didn't deserve it.
