Few people with actual productive lives know what "Godwin's Law" is.
Internet geeks do, however.
It is a theory, stemming from old Usenet forums and named after attorney Mike Godwin, that states that the longer a discussion goes on the more likely a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler becomes.
The proposition has also been rehashed to claim that the first person in an argument who compares their counterpart to Hitler or the Nazis automatically loses said argument.
If only Mayor Bloomberg had considered all of this before he spoke a few days ago.
On Friday, Bloomie used his weekly radio show to blast the state senators stalling his bid for mayoral control of city schools.
"If you remember Neville Chamberlain, no matter how many times you said yes, that's the starting point for the next round," the mayor said, invoking the name of the British prime minister who foolishly tried to appease Hitler. "There's always more, more, more. I think that just the time for that is over."
So, by making that statement, Bloomberg, to all of us geeks out there, instantly lost the argument by default.
Still, state Sen. Carl Kruger Monday was fuming at the WWII-era insult.
"We are not Nazis! We are legislators!" Kruger said, according to the New York Post. The senator said he wanted an apology from Bloomberg on behalf of "millions of people that lost family in the Holocaust," which included his relatives.
"Even to raise the name of Hitler, in and of itself, should have a public rebuke and is worthy of an apology," Kruger told the Post.
Technically, the mayor didn't really raise the name of Hitler, but we agree with the senator, who has issues of his own along with the rest of the clowns in the state senate.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) and city councilman Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn) had scheduled a press conference denouncing the mayor for his remarks, but they canceled it after the mayor kind of apologized, saying he didn't hear a question from a NY1 reporter right.
"In this case, I have decided to give the Mayor the benefit of the doubt." said Hikind. "But this unfortunate incident is a prime example of why we all need to be more cautious about what we say publicly.”
