Gruesome Dentistry Is Behind Us, But The Weird Stuff Is Here
Practically everything, really.
As a kid it makes sense for years that cartoon characters are real, bands are on standby at the radio station ready to perform, money’s issued magically for free from ATMs, and the laughter on TV shows is what remote controls pick up from the people at home.
It all makes sense.
Certainly it made more sense than the bombshell dropped in one of the July, 1966 issues of TV Guide – the most read magazine in the US at the time. Staggeringly, between 1946 and 1951 set ownership increased from 6,000 to 12 million.
Television had power then. It shaped American culture.
TV shoved radio out of the way and filled those airwaves with variety, drama and comedy. It smothered The Smothers Brothers for its controversial content. It changed the landscape of politics, civil rights and war.
They were real bombshells. The ones that made sense, anyway.
That TV Guide bombshell was that Charles Rolland “Charley” Douglass wasn’t talking.
Charley had an electrical engineering degree from 1933 that found him as a CBS broadcast engineer after a stint in the Navy during WWII. In 1953 he came up with the idea of developing a ‘laugh machine’ to enhance, or even replace TV show live audience feedback.
Charley wasn’t even talking about why he wouldn’t talk: let alone talk about who was buying his canned laughter. Nor was he spilling the beans on the circumstances under which he quit CBS in the decade before, to set up shop for his mysterious mirth machine, known as the ‘Laff Box’.
To 1960’s America, it was completely unbelievable that the laughs they heard on their beloved shows with their own trusting ears were a joke and a hoax.
At the time, it was estimated that more than a third of the 95 prime-time shows had been box doctored. ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ was included in that; it had it’s own audience and was more than capable of laughing it up for real. It was dumb to be dumbing down an audience that didn’t need to be told when to laugh, and Charley Douglass remained dumb about where all those recorded chortles and giggles came from, and where they all ended up.
Unearthing a high-sugar soft drink’s formula would have been an easier quest. In 2023 Medical News Today reported on a study claiming that every year, globally, 184,000 deaths are linked to sugary drink consumption.
Such soft drink’s recipe is still unpatented so that its secrecy is preserved forever and ever. Or as one might assume, until a class action happens, whichever comes first.
The two most known words in the world are (in order) “OK” and the name of a famous soft drink. So it doesn’t make sense for that soft drink to not take some responsibility for that telling toll.
What makes a huge load of sense is for soft drink manufacturers to not be okay with taking accountability for any of it. Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway and all the stockholders in the world distance themselves from it. Maybe in the hope that after a long time, somehow, something will make some other sense.
It won’t.
There’s a study that confirms that between 1990 and 2019, the disease burden attributed to sugar-sweetened drinks and its associated morbidity increased by 95%.
In China alone, 46,633 funerals happened in 2019 as the result of the excessive consumption of high sugar beverages.
It’s a statistic that needs a laugh track to tell you it’s funny, because it’s not.
Were it sent to the 1960s, to Charley Douglass’ padlocked garage in the San Fernando Valley, either Tex, John or Carroll – his three Laff Boys – would take some time to lay that sound in.
One episode of ‘Get Smart’ for instance, would take three or four hours when it was so completely Mel Brooksified it never actually needed it.
Where no Laff Boy ever spent time was with the world’s worst television show ever made: ‘My Mother the Car’. It put the ‘h’ in sitcom.
How it existed is one of the things in life that never made sense, and still doesn’t.
The funniest thing about it is that it didn’t have a laugh track punching laughs in your face to simulate and stimulate the funny that it wasn’t.
The hilarious irony. Particularly for the 2-year-old bottle-fed soft drink since birth, who had 20 pus-filled teeth removed by an Australian dentist during what he claims as the most traumatic procedure he’s ever performed.
That poor kid would have been better off if their mother was a car. Putting the ‘h’ in sitcom pales into insignificance when it can be so excruciatingly jammed into “(insert soft drink’s name) is it!”
Just in the UK, the number of children subjected to this commonplace dental horror has risen by 17%.
When toddlers in First World countries are routinely hospitalised to have rotten teeth extracted, it doesn’t make sense to claim that gruesome dentistry is behind us.
That proves that it’s with us, and in front of us.
What’s behind us, is not going to the blood-bucket barber-surgeon to have procedures done.
What’s behind us, is ether and cocaine and sporting ivory and hippo teeth.
We pretend that none of it’s gruesome anymore so it’s easy to overlook the dangerous DIY dentistry that’s prevalent because good oral health is a luxury that many simply cannot afford.
In Australia, less than 0.1% of funding goes to oral health.
The disease burden of having an unhealthy mouth is inarguably in the top ten major health issues. It is universally acknowledged that gum disease and tooth loss are linked to diabetes, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, mental health disorders, respiratory ailments – the list goes on.
That dental health is not covered at all by Medicare has long been accepted. Not because it makes any sense, but because it’s been going on for a long time.
Long enough for the corrupt culture of pork-barrelling to be dispassionately viewed as the priggy piggy face of democracy.
Long enough for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) to demand overhauling the evaluation of government spending, to stop money being wasted on policies and services that clearly don’t deliver.
95% of Federal Government programs over the last decade have not been properly evaluated.
Parliament’s producing ‘My Mother the Car’ and everyone’s pretending it’s not dated, stupid, embarrassing and holding the lowest common denominator as its polar opposite.
That the dental profession as a whole doesn’t lobby the relevant authorities for more and proper funding for better national oral health is the grim rim of the gruesome gruel bowl it has Oliver Twist holding.
Its distraction it seems, is weird and fashionable teethy tweakments with buzz branding and shelf-worthy, selfie-worthy packaging. In the similarly insidious way plastic surgery transposed from necessary operations to lunchtime cosmetic procedures, it all seems driven by social media’s influencers.
$55 toothpaste and teeth whitening pens are part of the new aspirational world of enviable enamel, continually adding to almost 700,000 teeth whitening challenge videos on TikTok. Braces are status symbols. Invisalign is still the Holy Grail. Colgate (more specifically Co.Colgate) has its Gen Z slargon, “Smile boldly, speak up louder, live your truth more boldly.”
Its tautology alone would never pass Boomer muster.
Of course, taking care of your oral care is a very, very good thing.
TikTok care-talking about oral care brands with little more than poseur packaging appeal pricing doesn’t make any sense. Although the “outcomes may vary” warnings are as frequent as “ideating”, when the promised tooth “brightening” of one product didn’t eventuate, a dental surgeon was consulted for comment.
Light refraction, which gives brightness, only happens with uneven surfaces.
When asked if there was anything that could be put into the product to make it more light reflective, the professional’s answer was, “Yeah. Porcelain veneers.”
Cue canned laughter.
Disclaimer: The material posted is for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Results vary with each patient. Any dental procedure carries risks and benefits. If you have any specific questions about any dental and/or medical matter, you should consult your dentist, physician or other professional healthcare providers.
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