May 5, 2008

FIA President Moseley's Troubles Worsen

Perhaps if your father had included Adolph Hitler on his wedding guest list you would be as myopic as Formula One’s Max Moseley when it comes to public relations. We don’t know what kind of wedding gift Der Führer offered Moseley’s papa, but we suspect that growing up in a household that celebrated Hitler might lead to lack of judgment later in life. So we are not exactly surprised that even in the wake of the most heinous publicity one could imagine over the last couple of weeks, Moseley would still be intent on keeping his job.

More information on Moseley has come out since we first reported this to you, and it is anything but pretty. The British paper The News of the World reported that Moseley had sex with as many as five prostitutes in a recent orgy -- and since Moseley is 68, you have to at least admire his athleticism. The paper further reported that many of the acts involved role-playing with the prostitutes portraying concentration camp victims, thus making the event not only an orgy but a “Nazi-style orgy” -- not the run-of-the-mill orgy we’ve grown so accustomed to.

Showing an incredible lack of public relations savvy, Moseley admitted he participated in the orgy but hotly denied that there were any Nazi connotations.  Despite Moseley’s attempts to stop their publication, videos depicting portions of the acts have been available on The News of the World Web site, allowing the world’s audience to judge for itself. The F1 executive has allowed that his private life might be a bit “eccentric,” and he has apologized to his wife and two children for the embarrassment the airing of this dirty linen has caused, but he says he fails to see how his sexual peccadilloes negatively affect his ability to do his job. 

Moseley says the mail he has received supporting his desire to stay has been seven times that calling for him to resign, which tells you something either about Moseley’s credibility or the attitudes of Europeans or both. Despite the fact that he is facing an FIA general assembly that could oust him on June 3, he says his intention is to stay and fight. Let’s just hope that in that fight, he doesn’t intend to use whips and chains.