# Mackenze Phillips Slept with Father John Phillips **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 23, 2009, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225 "2009-09-23T13:07:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/41 "2009-09-24T19:58:40Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > I generally don’t endorse guilt by association, but you can learn something about a man by his associates. In John Phillip’s case, Roman Polanski, a man with a known penchant for banging middle school aged girls, and the director behind one the greatest films of all time, a film with father-daughter incest at the center of its plot. I think Roman Polanski is about as disgusting a human being as you can get, but can you really fault him for making a movie about father/daughter incest? Especially when it’s not like the movie is condoning said incest? ---
**Author:** ![kath94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/67e7ee/32.png) [@kath94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kath94)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/42 "2009-09-24T20:06:26Z")
> [@HelloNinja](#): > > Shouldn’t the title say that she slept with Papa John Phillips? No, then we’d think it was the pizza guy, Papa John! ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/43 "2009-09-24T20:14:45Z")
> [@](#): > > It wasn’t until the mother of one found herself pregnant again and didn’t know whether the father of the baby was her then-husband, Shane Fontayne, or her own father. “How come I’ve never seen daddy and grandpa in the same room, Mommy?” “Well, dear - it’s complicated…” Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/44 "2009-09-24T20:29:11Z")
Or perhaps - “She’s my daughter!” _Whap!_ “She’s my sister!” _Whap!_ “She’s my daughter **and** my sister!” _Whap!_ “Certs is a breath mint!” _Whap!_ “Certsi is a candy mint!” _Whap!_ Etc. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/45 "2009-09-24T21:59:01Z")
**koeeoaddi** said: > [@](#): > > Michelle Phillips is suggesting that Mackenzie timed this revelation to coincide with Chynna’s new album because she is jealous of her sister. The sad truth is that in these situations the wives/mothers often are the strongest doubters and the least likely to accept it. I think it has something to do with if you accept that the person you love and married is capable of it, then you are saying something about your own judgment and obliviousness. **Belowjob2.0** said: > [@](#): > > In John Phillip’s case, Roman Polanski, a man with a known penchant for banging middle school aged girls, and the director behind one the greatest films of all time, a film with father-daughter incest at the center of its plot. Since I’m apparently not enough of a film buff, would you mind citing a title of said movie, for us clueless? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/46 "2009-09-24T22:01:47Z")
[Chinatown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_%28film%29) ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/47 "2009-09-25T00:19:12Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I think Roman Polanski is about as disgusting a human being as you can get, but can you really fault him for making a movie about father/daughter incest? Especially when it’s not like the movie is condoning said incest? I’m not actually faulting him. Chinatown was a great film, and Polanski is still one of our greatest living filmmakers. I believe that transgressive sexual behavior wrt children was part of the Hollywood zeitgeist, and it was talked about, and sometimes acted upon. Like Melanie Griffith bringing a 12 yo Tatum O’Neill to an orgy (wtf?! Seriously, who does that? And what parent puts her 12 yo kid in a movie where she plays a child prostitute and gets naked? I know momma Shields was an alcoholic, but I don’t think I could ever be that drunk.) ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/48 "2009-09-25T00:34:01Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > It just does feel skeevy to think that you could have a relationship with anyone that started with them raping you. And yet it worked on “General Hospital.” > **[Luke and Laura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_and_Laura)** > > Luke and Laura Spencer are fictional characters, and the signature supercouple from the American daytime drama General Hospital. Luke is portrayed by Anthony Geary, and Laura is portrayed by Genie Francis. Though other supercouples came before them, Luke and Laura are the best known outside of the soap opera medium and are credited with defining the term supercouple and leading other soap operas to try to duplicate their success. > Despite having been raped by a drunken Luke, Laura falls in love w... ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/49 "2009-09-25T05:27:01Z")
I watched the Oprah interview, and it raised more questions than it answered. For example . . . She claims that the first time, she was knocked out from drugs, and briefly awoke to discover she was having sex with her father . . . then once again became unconscious. If that happened to me, I’d strongly suspect the “discovery” was part of the drug experience, and never really happened. And then, beginning with the very next encounter, it suddenly became consensual? I don’t buy it. And the episode with Mick Jagger made just as much sense. I wouldn’t put it past John Phillips to do such a thing, but if I have to believe someone, I think Michelle’s side of it sounds more accurate. Oprah herself said that her producers were concerned about “Who’s gonna call the next morning to say it never happened?” ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/50 "2009-09-25T06:28:18Z")
> [@Jettboy](#): > > C’mon, it’s not like it’s some sort of crime to shoot up with and ‘make love to’ your daughter! I thought this was America, man… If it’s good enough for Noah, it’s good enough for me! ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/51 "2009-09-25T07:52:49Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > Exactly. And why does it need public airing and discussing? The “man” is dead. MP obviously needs help. Can’t she get that w/o Oprah etc? No one can get help without Oprah. I think they amended the Constitution for that about 10-15 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/52 "2009-09-25T07:59:49Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > If it’s good enough for Noah, it’s good enough for me! I think you mean Lot, and I hope you don’t think THAT was the moral of that story. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/53 "2009-09-25T09:46:26Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > In terms of adult incest - the most famous one I am aware of is the author [Kathryn Harrison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Harrison) (Wiki link), who wrote a novel that included that and then wrote a memoir revealing it was based on her real-life experiences with her own father… > > Just…ick. Not to hijack the thread, but Anais Nin wrote in great and lurid detail about seducing her father when she was around 30 or so. IIRC, the affair continued off and on for some time. I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but theirs would appear to be another in the “separated-relatives-reunited pattern of adult incest” that **Belowjob2.0** spoke of upthread. A recent review in the _New York Times_ had this to say about their affair: _"The central “unexpurgated” event of “Incest” is, well, incest. Nin had an affair with her father. It is not quite as horrifying as it sounds: she had seen her father, a well-known pianist and composer, only once in the 20 years following his desertion of the family when she was 11. As depicted here, father and daughter are a matched pair: equally self-infatuated and self-mythologizing, equally sex-obsessed and equally crazy. Her steamy account of their trysts exudes a sense of triumph: at last the cold, aloof father who destroyed her childhood appreciates her at her true worth!_ [Cite](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/22/books/sins-of-the-nins.html) A second review from the _NYT_ speculates further: _“Nin’s incestuous affair with her father – described in the portentous, heavy-breathing prose of a cheap romance novel – appears to have been a way for her to recapture the man who had abandoned her as a child. By seducing and subsequently abandoning him, she felt she could somehow reinvent her childhood and settle old emotional scores. At the same time, Nin’s romance with her father, like so many of her affairs, also strikes the reader as a willful way of courting psychological havoc, a way of stirring up further melodrama in her life that might provide further grist for her literary mill.”_ [Cite](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/04/books/books-of-the-times-the-diary-as-an-end-rather-than-the-means.html) It’s been my experience in life that people rarely think or do things for the reasons that outsiders suppose they do. About the only thing I’m sure of when it comes to Mackenzie Phillips and her father is that their perspective on what was going on between them was a great deal different than anything any of us are likely to assume. Still, these analyses of Nin’s incestuous affair with her father do add interesting food for thought when it comes to trying to understand why Mackenzie Phillips’ would engage in an affair with her father. None of this, of course, is to suggest that John Phillips was anything less than a sleazebag. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/54 "2009-09-25T12:58:04Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I watched the Oprah interview, and it raised more questions than it answered. For example . . . > > She claims that the first time, she was knocked out from drugs, and briefly awoke to discover she was having sex with her father . . . then once again became unconscious. Maybe it was really bad sex, or really, really bad drugs. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/55 "2009-09-25T17:10:21Z")
Her book is selling like hotcakes according to online stores. It was number 1 on Amazon earlier today. That’s not bad for somebody who’s been a has-been longer than Gary Coleman. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/56 "2009-09-25T18:11:20Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Her book is selling like hotcakes according to online stores. It was number 1 on Amazon earlier today. That’s not bad for somebody who’s been a has-been longer than Gary Coleman. Well, while Gary may have been screwed by his parents, it wasn’t literally… ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/57 "2009-09-25T18:20:42Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Her book is selling like hotcakes according to online stores. It was number 1 on Amazon earlier today. That’s not bad for somebody who’s been a has-been longer than Gary Coleman. Please, don’t give him any ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/58 "2009-09-25T18:32:07Z")
Speaking of Oprah, the other day [Dr. Phil](http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/1311) had on some of [Marcus Wesson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Wesson)’s adult children. Not exactly the same thing – he brainwashed the girls with religion (though I wonder how that could be compared to scrambling someone’s brain with drugs), and ended up killing nine of his family members, including children he fathered with his own daughters – but it was clear that at least one of the daughters had been convinced nothing was wrong with having sex with him from an early age (even telling the police it was consensual), and even after all that had happened some don’t see him as a monster. Again, not the same thing, but when there’s abuse consent is a tricky word to define. ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/59 "2009-09-25T19:06:52Z")
Yowza. Being an alcoholic, I can understand coming up out of a blackout into a terrible situation, but going back under quite quickly. Not “pass out,” remember, but “black out.” A black out is kind of like your brain goes home and goes to bed, but your body stays at the party. No one else knows you aren’t really “there”- you are walking, talking, carrying on coherent conversations, making decisions, spending money, etc. It’s scary as hell. John sounds scary too. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225/60 "2009-09-25T19:12:21Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Her book is selling like hotcakes according to online stores. It was number 1 on Amazon earlier today. That’s not bad for somebody who’s been a has-been longer than Gary Coleman. Meh. Marcia Brady’s biography was a big seller for a few weeks too because everyone wanted to read just what naughty drug/sex-fueled shenanigans she got up to in the 70s. And according to Jan, at least some of it was complete fiction. While I’m not saying that happened here, who knows how much the truth was stretched to make it a bestseller? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mackenze-phillips-slept-with-father-john-phillips/511225.md?page=4)