“Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Boss’s Orgy Draws Calls to Quit”
The great thing about this unusually juicy headline in the Times today is that not only does it combine “Nazi” and “orgy” and “Grand Prix,” but its writer basically had no choice but to use precisely those words. I can only imagine the orgy of editorial flagellation that went on trying to soften this one. (“Orgy,” of course, is a perfect headline word because it is so short and vivid. “Bacchanal”? “Debauchery”? “Saturnalia”? No way.)
The story is about Max Mosley, capo of grand prix motor racing, who was caught “in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex ‘dungeon.’” This particular sadomasochistic dungeon orgy involved what appears to be either some utterly sick Nazi-themed role-playing or an enthusiastic re-enactment of a rejected “Sprockets” skit:
In a video the paper [the Murdoch-owned News of the World] posted on the Internet but later removed, two of the women wore black-and-white striped robes in the style of prisoners’ uniforms. The video showed Mr. Mosley counting in German — “Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Fünf!” — as he used a leather strap to lash one of the women.
“She needs more of ze punishment!” he cried in German-accented English. One woman appeared to search his hair for lice while another called off items on an inspection list. Mr. Mosley, naked, was bound face-down and lashed more than 20 times.
Even better: according to the story, which was written by John F. Burns, one of the Times’s most serious and distinguished writers — two-time Pulitzer winner and current former Baghdad bureau chief — the man’s family has a dark association with fascism that extends all the way to Hitler:
Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain’s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.
The whole thing calls to mind Prince Harry’s unfortunate appearance at a costume party three years ago in a swastika armband:
Of course British aristocrats are not the only fools to get their kicks from whips and chains and cries of “Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Fünf!” But there is something peculiarly British about bondage and S&M, so much so that it is sometimes called “the English vice.” Presumably that goes back to laced-up Victorian days. But the president of a sport synonymous with sex, privilege, wealth and danger? A man who has “presided over the expansion of Formula One racing into one of the world’s richest sports”? Are the whores of Cannes and Monaco just not kinky enough anymore?
The irony is that in the end the Times’s just-the-facts hed is much more lurid and enticing than the one that the News of the World editors surely drooled over their computers to write: “My Nazi orgy with F1 boss Max Mosley.”
It’s just got no sting to it.
Update: Dude was vindicated!
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