Just when you thought Lindsay Lohan had (again) faded entirely from the spotlight, her perhaps even more notorious father, Michael, decides to go and get her name trending. The irony, of course, is the reason behind why Daddy not so Dearest is in the headlines: taking kickbacks from rehabilitation centers in Florida after steering patients their way. Being that Michael has always been a jack of all trades, starting from the time he worked as a stockbroker in the 80s and inevitably got arrested for insider trading, it’s no surprise that he should have segued into whatever this “career path” is.
The “what he does for money” part isn’t really the important takeaway from this little “gossip rag” item anyway. It’s the “irony defined” moment of realizing that, yeah, of course Lindsay was going to struggle with addiction for most of her life with a father who practically sanctioned it…and set the example himself. Which is where the simultaneously unexpected yet all too relevant “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse comes in. Released in 2006, just as Lohan herself was starting to initiate what would be a years-long anti-love affair with tabloid journalism (and rehab centers, to boot), Winehouse defiantly croons of urgings for her to go to rehab, “I ain’t got the time, and if my daddy thinks I’m fine…”
Mitch Winehouse, himself well-known for being pretty okay with cashing in on his daughter’s image (even in death), was just as cavalier about Amy’s addictions as Michael seemed to be about Lindsay’s. Because, after all, to quote Evita, “When the money keeps rolling in, you don’t ask how.” If your baby girl needs drugs to “do her work,” then yeah, you’re damn well going to let her if it ensures your paycheck. Only when drug use reaches a point of leading to total non-function, ergo compromising the cash cow, does Daddy decide to step in and say, “Oh shit, I better do something to secure my, er, my daughter’s bag.” Kind of like Jamie Spears in 2008 when all the meth finally went to Britney’s head (even though everyone still likes to cite, “I Feel Like 2007 Britney” despite ’08 being when the conservatorship went into effect after she was placed on a 5150 hold).
This “Daddy’s girl” dynamic (notwithstanding these daughters being long ago wary of their fathers’ intentions) shows up again and again in pop culture, namely among the “troubled” stars who only end up so troubled as a precise result of Father’s brand of parenting. Mitch Winehouse being a prime example, as he played a significant role as enabler (and then, exploiter—see: Amy, My Daughter, the “tell-all” Mitch released in 2012, barely a year after her death).
Her former manager, Nick Shymansky, ditched around the time Back to Black was being made, looked back ruefully on the situation being remediable before it was too late, commenting, “We got through a few arguments, the denial, and I got her to a place where she said, ‘Okay, fine, let’s do this, I can’t lie to you, there are issues.’ So I got her to go and see the guy about rehab. At the time I didn’t really know her father, but she made it clear to me she’d do it if he backed her. So I got on the phone and lined it all up, he assured me she needed help and that he’d back me. I drove her all the way to Bluewater where he lived, and he completely backtracked. It was like she manipulated him. She sat on his lap, gave him this look like, ‘I don’t really need to go, do I?’ and he was like, ‘Of course you don’t need to go.’” “Rehab,” subsequently, became her war cry—a defiant fuck you to the likes of Nick and anyone else who might dare to say she needed help and was going down a much darker path with Blake Fielder-Civil at her side.
Looking back on the genesis of “Rehab” in 2015, Shymansky remarked, “I knew at some point she’d write a really big hit, and it was ironic that the hit she wrote was, verbatim, that day, and it was mocking me. Not only was I not her manager any more, but she’d written this huge hit that’s undeniably brilliant, that was a complete mockery of our friendship and of what she needed. And the whole world’s dancing along to it, and really she was writing about a decision that five years later would result in her being dead.”
Then again, there are those who go to rehab and never get over their addictions—still do wind up dead or in the gutter. Or both, like Whitney Houston, who reportedly spent about $25,000 a month on drugs. Though in both the aforementioned cases of Lindsay and Britney, rehab seems to have worked. To have done some kind of trick. Or maybe, in Lindsay’s case, it simply took fleeing to ultra-conservative Dubai to kick all temptation. Or, in Britney’s case, being perpetually sequestered (some say against her will).
In all instances, a damaging patriarch was at play. One who either encouraged the behavior or simply turned a blind eye to it so the dough would continue to flow. Neither approach proved successful, which is likely why both Lohan and Spears are estranged from their respective fathers. And one has to wonder if, perhaps, that might have been the best route for Amy to come out the other side (for you can love a person and still realize that being around them is damaging). Though had she been in Florida (where she was married to Blake, incidentally) in the present, she might have been steered by Michael Lohan to, let’s just say, the wrong rehab center.
Whatever might have been, “Rehab” has a fresh new meaning when placed within the lens of the Michael/Lindsay Lohan dynamic. Even if there is nothing new about Lohan distancing herself entirely from Papa, who don’t preach nothin’ but “negativity” to her, as she declared in 2010 on Twitter with the statement, “I don’t want Michael Lohan Sr. anywhere near me no matter where I am. I am in a great place and he only brings negativity in my world.”
For all things 00s and Lindsay Lohan, go down this rabbit hole.
