KEY POINTS:
It's safe to assume members of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) general assembly never envisaged having to grapple with this question: where does a Nazi-themed sado-masochistic romp with five prostitutes rank on a scale of reprehensible behaviour?
But face up to it they did. In Paris this
week, the 160-odd members decided by a margin of two to one that said behaviour wasn't reprehensible enough to necessitate the removal of their president Max Mosley.
Many disagree, among them Bernie Ecclestone, the dwarfish former car salesman with Andy Warhol-style hair who runs Formula One. Pointing out that Mosley was persona non grata at the recent Monaco Grand Prix, they argue his pariah status prevents him from effectively carrying out his role.
To emphasise the point, Ecclestone revealed that his wife had to disinvite Mosley, a friend of 40 years standing, from her recent birthday celebrations because of the embarrassment it might cause to a number of corporate guests. Some might argue that turning your back on a friend in his hour of need to avoid ruffling corporate feathers is as dishonourable as Mosley's antics were disgusting. With friends like the Ecclestones, who needs enemies?
An interesting and important debate about private morality and public accountability has been largely drowned out by the tabloid blare. In this age of cellphone cameras, intrusive and sometimes unscrupulous media, and communications technology that encourages government agencies' big brother tendencies, it's a debate that's unlikely to peter out any time soon.
Mosley's position is that his behaviour was legal, harmless, consensual, and confined to the privacy of a rented dungeon. He strenuously denies the Nazi component. The affair became public knowledge through the duplicity of other parties whose motives, apart from the desire to sell more newspapers, are a matter of conjecture given the high stakes game that is Formula One motor racing and the murky involvement of Britain's spy agency MI5. (One of the hookers turned out to be married to an MI5 officer who has since resigned.)
The case against has several strands. There's the view that to associate yourself with Nazism in any way, shape or form is unforgivable, although Prince Harry seems to have been forgiven for attending a fancy dress ball in an Nazi officer's uniform.
There's the view that for someone of Mosley's background to associate himself with Nazism is unforgivable. His father was leader of the British Union of Fascists; his parents were married at the home of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.
Mosley was 11 weeks old when his parents were imprisoned at the outset of World War II. He's had to bear that cross all his life.
There's the charge of failing to be a role model and bringing his sport into disrepute. New Zealanders might observe that Mark Todd and the sport of equestrianism managed to ride out the storm generated by a not dissimilar tabloid expose.
Around the time the Mosley story broke, Eliot Spitzer resigned as Governor of New York after being outed as a regular user of call girls. The springboard for Spitzer's political career was his exploits as attorney-general, particularly his relentless investigation of the investment and finance industry which earned him the sobriquet the sheriff of Wall Street.
Rather than embark on lengthy, complex, expensive and uncertain court action, Spitzer's technique was to go public with his investigations then sit back and see how far the target company was prepared to let its share price plummet before it rolled over. Accusing Merrill Lynch of a "shocking betrayal of trust" triggered a $6.5 billion fall in the bank's market capitalisation while his assault on insurance companies wiped $48 billion off the value of the two biggest players.
Spitzer's critics, who were largely confined to the industry in his crosshairs, wondered how this squared with the right to a fair trial and the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and whether the public good was taking a back seat to Spitzer's political ambitions. Their carping was largely ignored by a media and public entranced by the spectacle of fat cats having a torch applied to their tails.
Now investigators are hinting that even as Spitzer was trumpeting his achievement in breaking up call girl rings, he was availing himself of the prostitution industry's services.
Like many a humiliated wife before her, Silda Spitzer stood beside her husband at the confessional press conference, at which he promised to "dedicate some time to regaining the trust of my family".
Mosley lives apart from his wife. His promise is that he'll fight tooth and nail to cling on to the FIA presidency. I say good luck to both of them.
