F1 Boss Ecclestone: Hitler "Got Things Done"

He also managed to compliment Saddam Hussein and offend black people all in the same interview. And he thinks Hitler was efficient?

In an interview published in today's The Times, Bernie Ecclestone, the 78-year-old British head honcho of Formula One racing, waxed psychotic on a number of things, including his frustration with modern political leaders and the benefits of tyranny. Some noteworthy quotes:

In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, 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 because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn't a dictator.

And:

We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taliban]. We move into countries and we have no idea of the culture. The Americans probably thought Bosnia was a town in Miami. There are people starving in Africa and we sit back and do nothing but we get involved in things we should leave alone.

But it's not all bad. Ecclestone, no stranger to controversy, did display an emerging sensitive side, expressing concern about racing fans "blacking up" to mock British driver Lewis Hamilton. This followed recent comments he made about how he "would love to have a good lady race driver and preferably black and Jewish too, but they might take maternity leave."

Reaction has been swift and understandably perplexed:

Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said: "Mr Ecclestone is either an idiot or morally repulsive."

Can't it be both?

Hitler? He got things done, says Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone [The Times] F1's Ecclestone criticized after Hitler comments [AP]