PLEASE, DONT squeeze the Charmin

Dick Wilson, the actor who played Mr. Whipple in more than 500 Charmin commercials from 1964 to 1985, died Monday at age 91, at a hospital for ailing movie and television actors, way out in the San Fernando Valley. He'd done other parts, in sitcoms, but showbiz can only be counted on to give a guy one sure thing, if he's lucky, and Wilson got to be Mr. Whipple, forever.

Wilson died on what just happened to be World Toilet Day, in which global health advocates and public bathroom accessibility proponents annually remind us that not even 20 percent of the planet's population enjoys daily access to a clean, working toilet -- to say nothing of "squeezably soft" rolls of tissue.

In other words, Americans are an incalculably comfortable (and comfort-seeking) people, and we would probably be horrified to re-encounter whatever toilet paper must have felt like in 1964. Mr. Whipple patrolled one of those supermarkets no one would go to anymore unless he had to, the medium-size IGA that knew not of eco-aware branding. Mr. Whipple loved to catch customers in the act of (egad!) touching things. Mr. Whipple would not do well in today's world of the Customer Is Always Right.

Lately toilet paper ads have been about pastel-hued cartoon bears who have a toilet paper dispenser mounted on a nearby tree. The bears make Mr. Whipple seem that much more real, and so much less weird. Of all the things we have no shame in discussing in 2007 -- where Oprah Winfrey routinely tells Dr. Mehmet Oz about the current shape of her excrement -- we seem to be getting more distant from Mr. Whipple's fussy intrusions, his fastidious way of changing the subject. Don't squeeze the Charmin, he said, which of course meant do.

So long, Mr. Whipple, master of reverse psychology. Thanks to you, we squeezed it like nobody's business.