Maxed Out

jalstin13.blogspot.com Boy, it can be embarrassing when our personal quirks become public knowledge. That time you went skinny dipping on vacation and someone caught it on film? Getting arrested for picking tulips in the city park? I must have been all of six when that happened to me, and the park keeper cared not a jot when I explained that the flowers were for my mom ' s birthday.

These, of course, are the lessons that inform our behavior in later life. There may be the odd indiscretion ( remember overdoing the tequila at the office party? ), but the closest most of us get to public scandal is when we see rock stars and basketball players misbehaving themselves on the covers of the supermarket magazines.

Last weekend, grainy photographs of a rumpled and mostly naked Mr Mosley appeared across several pages of a London tabloid newspaper. " F1 boss Max Mosley has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers, " screamed the front page headline. Somewhat startlingly, considering that Mosley is almost 68 years old, the paper revealed that the encounter had gone on for five hours. At the end of it, with true British phlegm, he downed a cup of tea and returned to his role as the grand panjandrum and administrator of world motorsport.

Had such a calamity overtaken me ( or you, too, I suspect ), my moral fiber would have crumpled. Conscious that whatever dignity I might once have possessed had now evaporated, I would have rushed to the nearest monastery, preferably a silent order, and hidden my face forever.

But Max Mosley is made of sterner stuff. Like the trained attorney he is, he is fighting back. He does not dispute that he paid the ladies $5000 for their company, and he does not deny that they laid about him with whips and chains. What irks him is the paper ' s unsupported suggestion that he indulged in fetishistic role - play, acting the part of a concentration camp guard and using anti - Semitic remarks. He plans to sue, among other things, for invasion of his privacy.

The " Nazi " slur rankles particularly painfully with Mosley, whose father, the late Sir Oswald Mosley, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists in the Thirties. Notwithstanding that he was twice injured in the British Infantry while serving his country in the Great War, Sir Oswald eventually set up an extreme right - wing movement, complete with black shirts, jackboots and stiff right arm salutes. His second marriage, to Max ' s mother Diana, took place in Berlin in 1936 with Adolf Hitler as one of the guests.

As a teenager, Max was active in his father ' s oddball politics. He had to be dissuaded from becoming a Conservative member of Parliament and devoted himself, instead, to motor racing. He briefly raced as a semi - professional before jointly founding March Engineering ( an acronym which was waggishly dubbed the Much Advertised Racing Car Hoax ). He sold up profitably and later became an adviser to F1 promoter Bernie Ecclestone.
With an astuteness that isn ' t always found in families as wealthy and aristocratic as his, Mosley was clearly cut out for big things. His opportunity came in 1991, when he was voted to the Presidency of the FIA ( Federation Internationale de l ' Automobile ). Working prodigiously hard, for no remuneration, he has distinguished himself and the federation by setting ever - higher targets for a wide variety of track - related causes, most notably safety and, more recently, cost cutting.

He has also demonstrated a high - handedness which has earned him countless enemies. In 2007, an FIA tribunal ruled that the McLaren - Mercedes team had taken advantage of technical material originating from track rivals Ferrari. Mosley, who has long been at personal loggerheads with McLaren boss Ron Dennis, was all for banning the Anglo - German team from the FIA World Championship for a whole year. Eventually the punishment meted out was a $100 million fine.

Inevitably, the newspaper story has generated indignation. Having prejudiced his personal dignity, how can Mosley continue to represent international motorsport? If the " Nazi " slurs are true - - and he plans to test the allegations in court - - his condemnation of racial taunts hurled against a British driver by Spanish spectators at a recent test looks hollow.

Until last week, leading car manufacturers had carefully refrained from criticising Mosley personally. With a grubby, grainy movie circulating on the internet, however, the gloves are off. BMW, Mercedes - Benz, Honda and Toyota, all manufacturers with their own F1 teams, have issued statements calling on the FIA itself to replace Mosley.

A statement from Germany ' s ADAC, the largest motoring organization in Europe, said: " In a letter to FIA president Max Mosley, ADAC has distanced itself from events surrounding his person.

" The role of an FIA president who represents more than 100 million motorists worldwide should not be burdened by such an affair. Therefore, we ask the president to very carefully reconsider his role within the organization. "

Mosley has responded by calling an extraordinary meeting of the FIA, which will take several weeks to assemble. With 222 members representing 160 different countries, this may prove too unwieldy, forcing the FIA to fall back on one its statutes which permits its Senate to make a provisional ruling which can later be ratified by the membership. Meanwhile, Mosley has written personal letters to every one of the 222 members of the FIA.