You may have heard of Godwin’s Law, a rule originally applied to Usenet message boards, which states that as a discussion gets longer, “the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” If you’re not familiar with that particular formulation, you have surely encountered the phenomenon it describes in your own life. And behold, buried in this conscientiously responsible Villager story on the community-board meeting about a proposal to build a larger stairway at the entrance to the Public Theater on Lafayette Street, it’s Godwin’s Law in action! “Isabelle Fisher, who lives on Lafayette St. ‘directly opposite’ the theater, took things farther, likening the institutional growth trend in the Village to Nazi Germany’s expansionist ‘lebensraum — like Austria in the 1930s.’” In summary, Shakespeare in the Park caused the Holocaust. [Villager]
