Egmont: Axe the Max

Author: Egmont Sippel

After details of his sex life came to light in the News of the World newspaper, Egmont Sippel argues that Max Mosley should resign as president of the FIA.

So, it wasn't just a badly timed April Fool's joke, after all.

And for a change it wasn't Kimi getting caught with his pants down.

Max Mosley is the culprit this time.

Max has been the culprit before, and not only in torture chambers populated by prostitutes.

Over the years, Max has also caused a lot of pain to F1 and F1 fans with his authoritarian approach to governance.

Yet, like Robert Mugabe, he has always soldiered on, regardless.

To this type of guy, to the Mugabe's and Mosley's of our world, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. That's why Max didn't even bat an eyelid when he fined McLaren $100 million in the first of last year's two espionage cases, but let Renault off scot-free in a second, and fairly similar, case.

Both teams should have been fined, at the very least - but the difference between penalties should not have been $100 million.

So, it was a power move by Mosley, firstly to kick Ron Dennis in the nuts, and then to kick him in the teeth.

Look who's boss, Max was saying. Look who's omnipotent in this game.

I have the power to condemn. And I have the power to absolve.

Delusions of grandeur?

Good lordie, Mosley even get his sexual kicks by exercising power, if the News of the World is to be believed.

Nothing atypical about that, sex experts who analysed the Eliot Spitzer case would tell you. Guys like New York's disgraced ex-governor go to hookers to amplify their sense of power.

That's the way most of the women commentators in the Spitzer case tried to explain the guy's stray behaviour. Not one of them admitted that he might have gone there just to relieve mental stress via physical release, or just because he felt - in the words of Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer - "so lonesome, that he took some comfort there".

Spitzer, in any case, paid a far heavier price than Mosley. That's the per hour rate we're talking about.

He also paid with his job. As a public figure heading up an important organ - in this case, erm, New York State - Spitzer was measured against an idealised set of values.

When he didn't match up, he had to eat humble pie and go.

Ex-President Clinton didn't. He lied and kept his job, although it was patently obvious that he had extra-marital affairs going, and not only with cigars.

Billy Boy's saving grace probably was that he didn't pay for his jollies, he didn't get it from the dirty side of carnal city.

Max did get it from there, five times over, if the News of the World's head count - fairly verifiable on video tape - is correct.

Yet Max won't go. Max will ride it out. Max has already announced his intention to stay put.

Max is, well, like Mugabe.

And he, sort of, has Bernie's backing for sticking it out. That's sticking it out as FIA president. And also sticking it out in, erm, in another sense, if you know what I mean.

For here's how long time buddy Ecclestone sees it: "(It is something) which, honestly and truly, is nobody else's business anyway."

Really?

Well, yes, if Max is to be believed. One of the claims in his letter of apology to FIA members is that his "private life is not relevant to his work". What Max does behind the green door won't harm his ability to do his job.

And he has a point, of course.

But his argument is only valid, up to a point.

About playing golf and sipping juice...

Privacy is no passport to unlawful acts, for instance. One can't be a paedophile or murderer in private, and then claim that it has nothing to do with anybody else.

The fact that OJ murdered Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldberg "in private" and was thereafter fit to continue his daily job - which was lounging around on expensive golf courses, sipping juice - didn't mean that his horrendous acts had nothing to do with the rest of the world.

It had. So did Gert van Rooyen's. It changed the world in a very fundamental way.

Psyche's were shattered, lives were destroyed.

Has Max's romp changed the world?

Not in a fundamental way.

But neither has Eliot Spitzer's.

Why was the pressure on Spitzer then so immense that he had to resign, whilst Max can quite defiantly announce that he will fight on?

Because Spitzer was a public servant, that's why. Once he lost his moral authority, he could not govern over the body (of people) that looked up to him for guidance and protection.

Max, by contrast, serves the interests of a relatively small organisation pursuing goals defined by themselves. F1, in essence, is a gentlemen's club - hey, a gentlemen's club - governed and controlled by a couple of megalomaniacs making huge money off...

... yep, sponsors and advertisers. But they're only in the game because of the public, the paying spectator, the TV viewer.

So, the thing to do then, right now, is to start a world wide petition asking Mosley to do the honourable thing and walk.

Why? Wasn't the News of the World even more at fault, by invading and destroying Max's privacy?

They committed a gross transgression, yes.

But that's a fight for Max and the paper, to be dealt with in court.

'You go, old chap!'

Mosley, on the other hand, has inadvertently given the paper quite a strong leg to stand on. Here is part of the ex-barrister's self-defence: "It is against the law in most countries to publish details of a person's private life without good reason."

Exactly, Max, exactly. The mere fact that you had sex with prostitutes could not possibly affect you in the same way that it had Eliot Spitzer; it is neither here nor there, concerning your role as president of a racing organisation, a brand of sport populated by a band of men who would probably wink and give you a congratulatory slap on the back with a "You go, old chap!"

That much would have been protected by the laws and conventions of privacy.

But if it is true that some of the women in your party wore Nazi outfits, and that you enacted a death camp scenario, and yelled out "Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Fünf! Sechs!" as you whipped a "prisoner" after having said that "she needs more of ze punishment," if all of this is true, then you must apologise not only to fellow members of the FIA, but to the world.

If true, this won't simply amount to a Muhammad Ali taking the mickey out of his opponents and detractors by self-mockingly calling himself "a bad man, a bad nigga' ".

It won't merely be a young and misguided Prince Harry wearing a Nazi armband to a drinking party.

It won't be a Mel Gibson scenario of making anti-Semitic statements and apologising. Who's going to fire Mel, in any case, from what (position)?

No. Max's case will be of a mature person, with a legal background nogals, acting as a figure-head of a major sports organisation, playing out a shockingly distasteful, hurtful and insulting fantasy.

Not for nothing, it seems, is Max the son of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, whose wedding was attended by Hitler.

The Times in London quoted a "leading figure in a Japanese F1 team" as follows on the Mosley scandal: "It's a credibility and judgment issue - fantasising about one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century is obviously completely inappropriate."

We couldn't have said it better. The News of the World might grossly have shattered Mr. Mosley's privacy. But it was 'with good reason', we argue, that those details were made public.

It changed the world of F1 and the perception of who is running it, in a very fundamental way.

It's time for Max to go.