As you may well have noticed, I'm not a big fan of David Aaronovitch. I think it's mainly because he has the attitude of disdain towards anyone who disagrees with him that's common to ex-NUS Presidents (including Jack Straw and Charles Clarke) but there was one interesting line in his Observer article today:

But the sight of White House adviser Richard Perle masturbating over what he hoped was the grave of the United Nations, was a reminder of where some of the kaleidoscope's pieces are floating.

As I've mentioned before, I participate in the soc.history.what-if (SHWI) Usenet group. A commonly used word on the group is 'wank' - usually in a negative connotation about a post where someone writes a 'what if' whose conclusions all justify their own political beliefs, without necessarily being based in reality. Thus, a hardcore Republican is wanking when he writes a WI where the whole world bows down before Saint Reagan, or a hardcore Democrat is doing the same where Reagan ends up villified and on trial by the whole world. There's also the subgroup of the 'weapons wank', usually in an ongoing timeline, where a post is merely a Clancy-esque description of some battle or other.

Now, while using the word in that way is understandable to most people, I've not really seen it used in that context outside of SHWI, and it's interesting to see Aaronovitch using 'masturbating' in a similar context indicating that the usage may be spreading into the wider world. One for the OED to watch out for, I guess.

(On a related SHWI note, the 'What If Gordon Banks had played' timeline has now finished. Damn.)