The Other W.C.

In the late dawn of the television age, Jack Paar (who predated Johnny Carson as "Tonight Show" host) was involved in a now-inexplicable national controversy over a joke he told that involved the British euphemism for toilet -- W.C., short for water closet. Today, another W.C. controversy erupted in Britain, with almost no ripples on these shores, even though it involves a prominent American -- fellow by the name of Dick Cheney. Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, drew his fair share of headlines this fall when he said American foreign policy was being run by a Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal. Today, he's given interviews to the AP and the BBC. Oddly, the AP interview includes allegations that the President was "too aloof," but not the most incendiary allegation, which he saved for the interview on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: that Vice President Cheney may be a war criminal. It comes not as an accusation, but as an answer to a question. Here's the audio.

But the American media seem to have decided that Wilkerson's fifteen minutes have run out. So far, only David Corn has picked up on this W.C....