This exercise was somewhat arbitrary, but not all things are really wankery. Wanking's a bit like obscenity, unsurprisingly, in the sense that it's hard to define but you know it when you see it. The Editors, who inspired the wanker of the day originally, tried to explain a bit at some point.
Everybody on the list is in part representative of a whole family of wankers. Some who didn't make the list failed to do so because they're dead. And some just...well, didn't seem precisely like wankers to me. I see people like BoBo and Reynolds as more Quiet American types, secretly napalming villages or nuking random cities while discussing Burkean humility over tea with Gail Collins or perusing the latest Sharper Image catalog. There's a word for that, though I'm not sure it's wanker.
