The Dark Side of the Sixties

Photo credit: cbcs from morguefile.com

As a budding young liberal it seemed like I’d missed out on the best era in America. Since I wasn’t born until August of 1966, about the only memories I had of the sixties were being pissed off at Kelly Lowe for blowing out the candles on my 3rd birthday cake and being terrified of the paperboy because the lady across the street told me he smoked marijuana and might go crazy one day and attack me. My parents were staunch Nixon supporters so they were no help either. When I was in college I remember being shocked to see a poster of John Lennon with 1940-1980 on the bottom. John Lennon and my dad were the same age?!? I couldn’t even imagine it. Instead of being one of those Woodstock babies, I only missed being born at the Grand Ole Opry by a couple of weeks.

Living without any rules or boundaries sounded great to me as a kid, but that’s only because I was lucky enough to have them. Mackenzie Phillips is just the latest in a long line of children from the sixties who struggled as an adult because she didn’t. Like John Phillips, Robert Downey Jr’s dad thought it was fine to treat his young son as an equal and let him take part in drug and alcohol use. And it’s only in the last few years that he’s finally managed to heal from the damage that did. Sadly, River Phoenix lost his struggle to come to terms with his past. In the interviews I’ve seen, he seems to downplay the effect that losing his virginity in the Children of God cult at age four had on him, but you can’t tell me that the pain that caused didn’t at least play a part in his overdose.

Mackenzie Phillips seems to be starting to come to terms with what happened to her but in one aspect I agree with her stepmother, Michelle Phillips. If she thinks any part of that relationship was consensual, she does belong on a psychiatrist’s couch. I understand Michelle Phillips’ disgust because who would want to admit, even to themselves, that they had a relationship with someone who could commit incest. But blaming the victim doesn’t help. I know some people think she’s only saying these things to sell her book but if that was so, why would she have told her youngest sister, Bijou, about it years ago?

It’s kind of ironic that the same week we found out all these disturbing revelations about one of the most beloved singer/songwriters of the sixties, one of the most reviled figures of the era died as well. I'm in no way excusing Susan Atkins' crimes but good God, the woman had one leg and was dying of brain cancer, how much of a threat to society could she really have been by that point? Why are we so vengeful that we can't even show a little mercy to a killer who wasn't much more than a kid herself when it happened and had been brainwashed by a maniacal cult leader? I remember watching Helter Skelter in elementary school and being terrified at the ending when they said they would be eligible for parole in 1979. Now it just seems sad that 30 years later, we still can't let it go.