Former teen TV star Mackenzie Phillips writes in a new autobiography - released 30 years after the last time anyone paid any attention to her - that she had a 10-year sexual relationship with her father, John, a member of the 1960s musical group The Mamas and the Papas.

Phillips claims the first encounter, when she was 19 and about to get married, was rape but that the tawdry entanglement then became consensual. And to make her story just a little more juicy, she says she became pregnant somewhere along the way and that Papa John paid for an abortion out of fear that the baby might be his.

And, of course, Phillips now has taken to the talk show circuit (gabbing with Oprah, et. al.) to share all the salacious details in an effort to prop up sales of a book that otherwise would collect dust on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.

All of which raises one key question:

WHY THE HELL DO WE NEED TO KNOW ANY OF THIS STUFF?!