Weekend at Bernie's (not Madhoff, amazingly)

I've got a new hero, and I really need to start following F1 racing more. When NASCAR has a controversy, it's about teams cheating, or maybe with the Mayfield stuff, it's about drug use. When F1 has a controversy, Nazis are prominently involved. First, it was Board Room favorite Max Mosley. And now it's the new F1 boss, Bernie Eccleston's comments regarding the nature of the nuanced balance between individuality and governance. Perhaps my favorite sports owner of all time, Marge Schott (God bless her soul) has already chimed in with a few sentiments that may or may not have influenced Bernie:

"Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far."
"Everything you read, when he came in he was good. They built tremendous highways and got all the factories going. He went nuts, he went berserk. I think his own generals tried to kill him, didn't they?"

Now, whether you think that Bernie took his stance on Hiter from Auntie Marge, or that people of an older generation thought differently about the world, or if these two are just independently brilliant, I know one thing. All I know is that this Bernie dude is awesome. There are a number of money quotes from the AP report that ESPN picked up.

"...but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done. In the end he got lost, so he wasn't a very good dictator."

But this guy doesn't stop with comments on Hitler and dictatorship, he takes a swipe at democracy, as well. For my regular readers (or reader, I suppose), you'll note that my take on democracy is a little non-conventional, as well.

"[Democracy] hasn't done a lot of good for many countries -- including this one."

In fact, I have an unfinished blog post that opens up with this gem of a thought:

"I'm more and more convinced that freedom and democracy are just bad ideas when people are morons."

But in the end, it appears that me and Bernie aren't cut from the same cloth. It turns out that he's a horrible misogynist:

"Women should dress in white like all other domestic appliances."
"I would love to have a good lady race driver and preferably black and Jewish, too, but they might take maternity leave."

I mean, I take women's rights very seriously. But aside from that, me and my man Bernie have amazingly similar takes on democracy and governance. I mean, I haven't had a chance to write up any thoughts on Hitler, yet, though he probably is a first ballot hall of famer in my Dictator Hall of Fame. I mean, it's hard to compare dictators from different eras (different technologies, expansion diluting the talent pool, etc.), so it's hard to compare current faves like Mugabe, Jong-Il, Ahmadinejead, or Chavez to old school dictators like Hitler, Ghengis, Alexander. But you have to believe that the new guys are just learning, in comparison to the all-time greats. In any case, I hope to hear more from my buddy Bernie soon!

-Chairman