Do the British really have bad teeth?
And what happened to that hilariously stern British dentist from Se04 of the Simpsons? Teeth, Tim Hortons, Roosevelt, & other nonsense.
Once upon a time @ PAINLESS DENTISTRY (FORMERLY PAINFUL DENTISTRY) in Springfield, Oh Hiya Maude, Ralph is undergoing a routine checkup.
The photographs prove too grisly for Ralph and he starts bawling and promising to brush more. But are British teeth really that bad?
In a word: No.
In fact, in the years before WWI, it was the Americans who had bad teeth. The Yanks owe their reversal in dental fortune to an obscure public-health pamphlet called The British Book of Smiles. The slim volume slowly wended its way through the trenches and through the hands of bored Canadian, American, Australian, and British troops. Have you ever been so bored while eating breakfast that you read the cereal box? That’s pretty much the equivalent what these boys did.
Not having anything else to read, it’s likely that many of the soldiers who managed to survive the Great War, embarked upon the healthier dental regimens recommended in the pamphlet as soon as they got home, doing things previously unthinkable, like brushing three times a day, taking care to not neglect the tongue or roof of their mouths, and brushing in both downward and upward motions so as not to loosen their gums over time. They also began to replace their toothbrush every three months. According to The Guardian, “[v]isiting servicemen spread the use of toothbrushes when they went back home.” Another recommendation in The British Book of Smiles was the use of soft brushes, not the medium or hard ones preferred by the Yanks, and sales of soft brushes skyrocketed throughout the Roaring Twenties. Naturally, affluent civilians followed suit, with America’s still-extant middle class and various poor cohorts bringing, or trudging, up the rear.
There are two schools of thought regarding the fluoridation of tap water. One claims that the fluoridation of our drinking water is extremely harmful and should be immediately halted. The second camp points to vague, decades-old studies to show that the fluoridation of most North American cities’ water has helped prevent cavities, or at least delay them.
But the ridiculous claims made in magazines of the 1940s & ‘50s that fluoride was a wonder drug that may eventually one day render the dentist obsolete have not come to fruition, although visits to the dentist have dropped in America between 1990 and 2018, they haven’t altogether stopped (Wong 12).
[A MUSICAL DIGRESSION BECAUSE DENTISTRY IS BORING: I find it interesting that just as railroads, mines, water towers, backroads, and other fragments of industrial American infrastructure began to atomize into smaller and smaller pieces as the 20th Century progressed, so too did American rock ‘n roll music, taking bizarre offshoots into cowpunk (Uncle Tupelo, Souled American), lo-fi Beatle-esque psych rock (Guided by Voices, The Flaming Lips), pop songs with extremely distorted guitars (The Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr., Weezer), grunge (Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice & Chains - who have all sadly lost their original singers), metal (Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth), shoegaze (Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine), 21st Century garage rock (Harlem, Reigning Sound, Heavy Times) and one zillion more lightweight, welterweight, and heavyweight expressions of love, fear, nostalgia, beauty, & angst to blow across the wild prairie emptiness of our hearts.]
Rant almost done
We’ll be right back to our regularly scheduled post after this mid-1990s gem from Souled American (Canada’s equivalent of King Cobb Steelie, a Guelph band reminiscent of Toronto’s Vibrolux, and Vancouver’s astonishing Archive all of whom got a lot more love & press after they stopped playing & recording.)
Same thing happened to Orson Welles, for that matter, who was fond of saying “They’ll love me when I’m gone.”
A youth before a past/At least before at last/A song before a voice/A change before a choice/A lamp before a light/Stuck with today before tonight...
Dear lord, that’s a beauty. If you & your music can strike a more profound note of yearning, I’d like to hear it. Email me @ essayelf at googlemail dot com
Okay. Back to teeth & fluoride water treatment, whose opponents claim that current policies are tantamount to deliberate fluoride overdose, whose effects we are only beginning to understand. There is already fluoride in our toothpaste and mouthwash, these people point out. It’s even in our food! Why would we need even more?
I’m not taking sides here, but they do have a point. If fluoride is already is everything, why would we need it in our tap water, especially these days, when most people drink bottled water, using tap water only to boil pasta or rice?
It has to do with Franklin D Roosevelt’s legacy, really. Funny that he’s considered one of America’s all-time greatest Presidents. Typically, the list goes Washington - who owned slaves - at #1, Franklin, who also owned slaves and fathered a child with one of them, a woman named Sally Hemings, at #2, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt at #3. This is funny because today his policies would be seen as radically socialist. Almost communist.
I have always found it a great shame that FDR never lived to see the capitulation of Nazi Germany, victory in Europe and the end of the Third Reich. It would have been a fine send-off for such a great man. But alas, it was not to be. It almost seems a cruel cosmic joke that Roosevelt died on April 15 1945 while Hitler died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 30 1945.
The two men died 15 days apart. How unfair is that?
Hitler insisted his underlings and his mistress Eva Braun, ingest cyandide. Watching the agony of their death throes, the weakling pushover bastard had a last minute change of heart (an all too common occurrence in the waning days of the Reich) and shot himself in his Berlin bunker just as the Soviet Red Army began to storm through the city of Berlin, smashing windows and burning buildings. They even raised the flag of the USSR over the Reichstag.
In his final moments, quivering with fear, Hitler could clearly hear the destruction and ruin he’d brought upon his own city. Footsteps marching in formation above him. The war he nearly ruined the world with had come home to roost. But unlike Stalin, who refused to evacuate Moscow as the German army was rapping on its door, he did not stand tall and firm. Hitler took the easy way out.
ANYWAY, the American republic has veered so sharply rightward that FDR would be viewed as a hopeless dreamer of a leftist even to supporters of Bernie Sanders. One of FDR’s many legacies was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which, according to Wikipedia “was an ambitious employment and infrastructure program created by President Roosevelt in 1935, during the bleakest years of the Great Depression. Over its eight years of existence, the WPA put roughly 8.5 million Americans to work.”
What??? The U.S. Government just handing out jobs to people? And not pointless jobs either but ones that built highways, parks, and other public works projects? Again, from Wikipedia: “Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing.”
That would never happen today. Middlemen would have to be created. Agencies that vet then hire employees, instead of the government doing it themselves, would all clamor for the lucrative Government Contract. This process would have the added bonus of paying the workers the bare minimum but splitting the extra profits between the Agency’s admin staff and the Government. This would make the Agency look like a model of private and public sector co-operation, and more agencies would be created in more states, with the extra money always going to admin staff, efficiency consultants (one who always seem to have a blind spot when it comes to themselves. Their jobs do not need to exist. They know this, but they cannot say it. For a book-length study of this modern phenomenon, see Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber).
I hate republican conservatives but I hate say-good-things-but-do-nothing liberals even more. It used to be that “do-gooder” was a pejorative term. The OED defines “do gooder” as “a well-meaning but unrealistic or interfering philanthropist or reformer.” That’s a bull’s eye. But most liberal progressives I know do fuck all for people, preferring to instead spend their time virtue signalling and being sanctimonious jerks on Twitter. They are “say gooders,” nothing else. It’s all a game of Look At Me and I fucking hate it.
I’m not saying I’m a good person. But I give money to panhandlers and buskers and I’m not one of those “I’ll buy you a sandwich but I won’t give you any money” people. That’s a judgemental position and if these people are coming from a place of religion, maybe they need to brush up on the part that says “judge not lest YOU be judged yourself.”
The ONLY thing that makes a drug addict feel better is the DRUG THEY ARE ADDICTED TO. Not a Tim Horton’s sandwich. You’d be better off saving the $7.99 or whatever the fuck that former Leaf defenceman’s coffee empire is charging for his inedible sandwiches.
[AND NOW IT’STIME FOR A DIGRESSION INTO HOCKEY BCUZ DENTISTRY IS ONLY MILDLY INTERESTING, IF THAT. So! That man in the picture below is Tim Horton. Yes, the Tim Horton. No, you can’t go to a con and meet him. He’s dead. Quite dead. From Wikipedia: Following Horton’s death, Ron Joyce offered Horton's widow Lori $1 million for her shares in the chain, which included 40 stores. She accepted his offer and Joyce became sole owner. Years later, Lori became dissatisfied with Joyce's offer, and filed a lawsuit against him. In 1993, Lori lost the lawsuit; an appeal was declined in 1995 and she died in 2000 at age 68.]
TIM: Lori, you sold the donut franchise for how much?
LORI: Oh shaddup Tim. You had how many drinks before you got behind the wheel the night you died?
TIM: Fair point, Lori. Fair point.
LORI: I know. So shut the hell up. I’m thinking of starting a support group for people who’ve been fucked by small-dicked selfish capitalist assholes. Dick McDonald, one of the brothers Roy Croc stole McDonald's from, has expressed interest in joining.
TIM: What about Mac?
LORI: He died before you did Tim, in 1971.
TIM: Oh.
Here’s the couple in happier times on their honeymoon in 1952, a year before Tim made the jump to the Toronto Maple Leafs, where he played 18 seasons, winning four Stanley Cups (1962, 1963, 1964 and 1967). Because Tim played the bulk of his career before the creation of the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA), his pension, which went to Lori, was only for 7 seasons, instead of the 24 he played in the NHL. If Lori had access to a 24-season pension from the NHL, she wouldn’t have had to sue Ron Joyce in the hopes of getting a fairer deal, She didn’t die in poverty, but she didn’t die in luxury either.
With 15 games remaining in the 1969-1970 season, the Leafs traded Horton to the New York Rangers, hoping a veteran presence on the blueline would help them advance past the first round, something New York had had trouble doing for years (sound familiar? *cough Leafs cough.* No second round appearance since 2004 cough*). Hard to find any in-game Ranger pics of Horton that actually look like him, so I used this card:
Tim Horton immediately made an impact on the Rangers blueline, with 6 points in the regular season’s final 15 games (1 goal, 6 assists, and 28 penalty minutes). But the Rangers were under tremendous pressure in the post-season. They hadn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1940 and after the Rangers lost Game One 8-2 and Game Two 5-3, public support for the veteran Horton began to wane, even though he scored a goal in the latter game. Newspapers gleefully pointed out that the inimitable Bobby Orr was born the same year Tim Horton was drafted. Age was less important in those days, however. Gordie Howe played in the league across 5 different decades, the 1940s to the 1980s. At one point he even played on a line with his sons when he signed with the Hartford Whalers.
Game Three at Madison Square Garden was pandemonium. As author Thomas Pynchon once wrote: “This is New York. Rudeness was invented here.” Rangers fans pelted Bruins fans (and players) with popcorn tubs, beer cans, and other projectiles. Wikipedia: “By the end of the Rangers' 4–3 win, the teams had set a new NHL playoff record for penalties (38) and penalty minutes (174).”
The Rangers won Game Four comfortably 4-2, thanks to another brilliant performance by goaltender Ed Giacomin.
Game Five was one of those nail-biting, purist games where the goalies duel it out, but Giacomin came up just short of stopping the deluge. Orr scored first, then set up Phil Esposito’s winning goal, and second of the game, for a 3-2 Bruins victory.
Game Six. Everybody hates a game six. One team can totally fuck the dog and still get another chance in Game Seven. The Rangers’ backs were against the wall. They had no dogs to fuck. And so they lost 4-1, with Bobby Orr scoring twice, his second goal the winner. The Rangers took 6 penalties. In a Game Seven. Even the famously onerous New York media wanted to blame Horton but couldn’t. They blamed Emile Francis instead.
That’s a nice smile. You gotta have a nice smile when your record as coach of the New York Rangers looks like this:
1966: Missed playoffs
1967: Lost in Semi-Finals
1968: Lost in Quarter Finals
1969: Lost in Quarter Finals
1970: Lost in Quarter Finals
1971: Lost in Semi-Finals
1972: Lost in Cup Final
1973: Lost in Semi-Finals
1974: Lost in Semi-Finals
1975: Lost in Semi-Finals
1976: Lost in Quarter Finals
(Francis is FINALLY fired and signs with the St Louis Blues. Honestly, he was with the Rangers so long, some thought he either had cozy Mob connections or connections to the long-defunct (or was it defunct?) Tammany Hall Political Machine.)
1977: Lost in Quarter-Finals
Fired after season, then rehired before the 1981 season.
1982: Lost in Quarter Finals
1983: Lost in Quarter Finals
ANYWAY back to Tim, who at age 41 signed a $100 000 contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins. From Wikipedia: [His Pittsburgh contract] was the largest contract at the time for the five-year-old franchise. With a broken ankle and a shoulder separation, Horton only played 44 games for the Penguins and managed just 2 goals and 9 assists for 11 points on the year. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette observed wryly that each of those 9 assists cost team just under $100 000, with the rest of the cash covering the measly 2 goals Horton scored. Just like in New York, Horton was having trouble living up to his tough guy reputation. He missed half the season but made it back in time for 44 regular season games and 4 playoff games in which the Pens were promptly swept by the Chicago Blackhawks. In the post season, Horton registered just one assist, no goals, and a surprisingly low 2 penalty minutes. He was bruised and battered and far past him prime. His wife Lori encouraged him to retire. His business ventures were doing better than they had ever expected. According to Wikipedia, “by 1968, Tim Horton had become a multi-million dollar franchise system.”
Statue of Horton outside the original Tim Hortons store in Hamilton.
But Horton was a stubborn, prideful man. When he heard that his former teammate with whom he’d won four Stanley Cups had opened his own coffee and donut shop, he was furious. Sure, coffee and donuts were not a particularly original concept, but Eddie Shack leveraging his popularity with the fans in order to start his own business venture angered Horton (even though he’d done the exact same thing).
Eddie Shack in his mid-1960s heyday.
Maybe Horton was right though. Eddie Shack donuts was a complete rip-off of Tim Horton’s. Though Eddie Shack Donuts was never as popular as Tim Horton’s, Horton still seethed that his “idea” had been stolen.
The closest Eddie Shack Donuts to where I grew up near McLaughlin Road & Williams Parkway in Brampton was at the intersection of Hurontario Street & Charleston Sideroad in Caledon. That’s a 33.1 km distance, or a 26 minute drive, whereas the nearest Tim Horton’s to my house was an easily walkable 2.3 km, or 4 minute drive.
This particular location of Eddie Shack’s also attracted, how shall I put this, certain “fringe elements.” I remember my former boss @ Valor Specialty Products, one Hugh Ferguson, a man I used to carpool with because we both lived in Orangeville and worked in Mississauga, a man who shot his estranged wife and then himself just 3 years later, stopping in this parking lot once to buy a brick of hash.
That’s the clearest photo I could get from Orangeville.com. I feel so bad for Hugh’s kids. Hugh did a monstrous thing but he wasn’t a monster. He was an alcoholic who went nuts one night after his wife Heidi told him the marriage was over for good, shot her in the chest with his hunting rifle, then sped back to their old family home in Camilla, which the article mentions them relocating to in 2005. I'd helped them with that move. I carried the couches and beds and shelves and wall-units out of the Ferguson’s old house in Bolton and then carried them into their new, enormous mansion in Camilla, which is north of Orangeville.
Upset with an article published in the Toronto Sun, Hugh’s son sent an email to the newspaper defending his father: “My father was a wonderful man and was not the crazy man that shot at cops during the event as you stated,” he wrote, trying to clarify a misconception that his dad had shot out the tires on an OPP vehicle before taking his own life.
The press (the Toronto Sun, of course), had mistakenly reported that Hugh shot out the tires of a police car and a SWAT van. What actually happened was that the team of inexperienced SWAT officers and a cop in his own car, neither of whom had ever dealt with an “armed stand-off” before, drove over the spiked strip themselves. The cops disabled their own vehicles, not Hugh. And it wasn’t an armed stand-off anyway.
Hugh was simply working up the nerve to kill himself. He did not shoot at any officers or neighbours. He shot himself. His final moments were likely frantic ones, in which he wrote last minute letters and/or notes to his son and daughter.
You know what’s weird? I worked with Hugh for Troy Bogner @ Valor Specialty Products from 2004 to 2006 and Hugh used to regale me with sad tales of suicide from back on Manitoulin Island, which is where Hugh hailed from. The island has the highest suicide rate in Canada. One day, one of Hugh's high school buddies called the cops, gave his address, and said he’d be at the bottom of the driveway when they got there. Sure enough, when they got there, he was there. Lying in his own blood and viscera. Hugh’s friend had shot himself in the head. He was dead well before first responders got there. There were five or six other similar stories like that Hugh told me. I never would have thought that Hugh would join that sad list of Manitoulin Island natives who committed suicide.
ANYWAY, Eddie Shack Donuts was the Coffee Time of its day. A sketchy place where sketchy people bought drugs.
In the 1965-66 season, when Eddie Shack had a breakout season, scoring 26 goals and 17 assists, “[h]is popularity was such that a novelty song called "Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack", was written in his honour and performed by Douglas Rankine with The Secrets, reaching #1 on the Canadian pop charts and staying there for almost three months.”
For a while there, the term “Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack” was a euphemism used by drug dealers selling their wares in Eddie Shack parking lots, meaning “cup it…here comes a cop.”
The very last Eddie Shack Donuts was the one @ Hurontario & Charleston and it closed sometime after 2005. I can’t be any more specific than that because when I left Orangeville, I never went back, nor did I intend to.
ANYWAY, Eddie Shack’s Donuts never had a chance at competing with Tim’s, who had 40 locations by 1974. As I said, shortly after Tim’s death, Lori sold her share of the franchise for $1 million dollars. Some people say she’s crazy, but that’s only now, with the benefit of hindsight. In 1974, it seemed like the prudent think to do. Tim’s was still a small business.
According to Fundera, “20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small business fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.” Read that last line again: “70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.” Lori would just have to hope Tim's didn't go under.
Tim and Lori had started their first coffeeshop in 1964. Should Lori have gambled her future away on a maybe? Nobody could have predicted that there would be 4,286 Tim Hortons locations in Canada as of August 08, 2021, and another 622 Tim Hortons locations in the United States as of January 19, 2022.
This is all a moot point anyway. Lori Horton died in 2000 at the age of 68. In 2000, there were about 2100 Canadian locations and 300 in the United States, mostly in New York and the MidWest. But Lori paid no attention to this. It would have been the 2000 equivalent of browsing an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend’s or exes Facebook page. All it would have done is hurt. Friends of Lori said she never got over Tim’s death. She'd disagreed with his decision to continue his NHL career (revenge is never the best reason to keep working, but he wanted to lay Eddie Shack flat out on the ice.)
After, and despite, his two-and-a-half seasons in New York, and one in Pittsburgh, Horton remains closely associated with the Toronto Maple Leafs in our collective cultural historical memory. Still, at age 42, he still very badly wanted to play.
So he reached out to an old friend, “Punch” Imlach, the man who’d coached him to four Stanley Cup wins with Toronto. Imlach had never forgotten Horton’s display of loyalty in April 1969, when Imlach was fired moments after an embarrassing first round loss and veteran Leafs Johnny Bower and Tim Horton both said they would leave with Imlach of je were fired. Imlach talked both Bower and Horton out of quitting, and they both returned the following season, although neither would remain with the Leafs for long.
Wikipedia: In spite of Horton's age, 42, and considerable nearsightedness, Punch Imlach of the Buffalo Sabres, who had also been the former Leafs' general manager, acquired Horton in the Intra-league draft and signed him in 1972. In 1973, his performance assisted the Sabres into their ever first playoff appearance. Horton later signed a contract extension in the off-season. But he struggled mightily during the 1973-74 season. He didn’t mind too much about letting the fans down, knowing how fickle fans were/are, but he couldn’t bear the though of letting Imlach down.
After losing a game to his former team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, right here on Toronto, and despondent over his play that season (he’d tallied 6 assists but hadn’t scored a single goal in 55 games) he agreed to head to the bar with his old teammates. He was angry about losing the game that night (a placid 4-2 affair, and although he “sat out the third period and playing with a jaw and ankle injury,” he was named one of the game’s Three Stars). Horton hung out in Toronto until 2AM, drinking with former teammates.
According to Ron Joyce, and Wikipedia, “Horton stopped at his office in Oakville on his drive to Buffalo, and was met there by Ron Joyce. While there, Horton phoned his brother Gerry, who recognized that Tim had been drinking and tried to persuade him not to continue driving. Joyce also offered to have Horton stay with him. Horton chose to continue his drive to Buffalo.”
Lori Horton disputes this account. First of all, what was Ron Joyce doing in the office at 3am? Secondly, Horton hated mixing business and hockey. They were two separate things to him. Yes, he got paid to play hockey, but he didnt get paid to love it. He just did love it. His agent handled his NHL contracts.
Now, Tim didn’t love making coffee and donuts. He didn’t hate it either, but it wasn’t his life’s calling (Pittsburgh 28).
Anyway, let’s get back to the point. At 2 AM a very drunk Tim Horton got behind the wheel of his car. Whether he stopped by his office or not, Horton was dead by 4AM. Of that there is no doubt.
Wikipedia: “He passed a curve in the road at Ontario Street and was approaching the Lake Street exit in St. Catharines when he lost control and drove into the centre grass median, where his tire caught a recessed sewer which caused the car to flip several times before it came to a stop on its roof in the Toronto-bound lanes. Not wearing a seatbelt, Horton was found 123 feet from the car. He was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Catharines General Hospital. The cause of death was a broken neck and a fractured skull.”
In those days, public figures would be protected by police, therefore the police “would not state whether or not Horton was intoxicated.”
In 2005, “Horton’s autopsy was finally made public (with witness statements redacted), and revealed that his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, and that a half-filled vodka bottle was amongst the crash debris. Horton was also in possession of the drugs Dexedrine, a stimulant, and Dexamyl, a stimulant-sedative; traces of amobarbital, an ingredient in Dexamyl, were found in his blood. The autopsy report found no painkillers in Horton's body, and also concluded that his car had been in good working order.”
For fractures of such severity, doctors concluded that Horton must have launched his car at least 60 feet into the air. Ironically, he was driving the Porsche De Tomaso Pantera that Punch Imlach had given to him to entice him to play just one more season for the Sabres. The Sabres missed the playoffs that year anyway.
When Lori died 26 years later, she was interred beside Tim in York Cemetery, Toronto.
Hockey digression over. Back to FDR and mass fluoridation.]
FDR’s public works programs under Biden would be disastrous, but they wouldn’t have been implemented much faster under Obama. Under Trump, it would have seemed to be rolled out faster because of the good PR teams Trump surrounded himself with, hiring and firing them at will. FDR-style public works programs under Trump would show a bunch of videos of the President walking through half-built buildings while men in hard hats making decisive hand gestures follow him and Trump nods sagely. A few other photo ops would take place, where an average beflanneled American would shake Trumps hand, smiling as if he’s a little unsure of himself, as if someone just out of frame is stage-whispering “more natural! make it more natural!”
Trump would have likely supported the fluoridation of water. He’d flash his unnaturally pearly whites and say something brash like”if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” His followers would eat it up. His detractors would scramble for an equally memorable phrase, and fail miserably.
Mass fluoridation programs were typically implemented between the late 1930s and early 1960s as part of the New Deal. FDR died on April 15 1945. By then middle-class Americans had access to their own toothbrushes and paste, if not to their own dental care. The poor were still fending for themselves. Many poor people didn’t even own their own tooth brush. Husbands and wives often shared a single brush, and their offspring were expected to do the same. In extreme cases, one tooth brush was used by the entire family (Nadr 15).
The first American toothbrush was issued in 1857 and mass production began in the 30 years later, though there was no public push or marketing campaign for each American to own his or her or their own toothbrush (Nadr 13). The fluoridation of water was known to prevent tooth decay and is even now considered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be “one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century” (CDC). But it’s not the 20th Century anymore. We need to recognize and respond to the problems of this century. You’d be hard pressed to find even a poor person with a toothbrush and paste these days. But if scientists found a definitive link between fluoride and osteoporosis, would anyone listen to them? Or would the political leanings of said scientists be picked away at so the whole thing could be turned into a political, not medical, issue, like in Adam McKay’s hilarious but maddening Don’t Look Up (2021).
Let’s move on, shall we? Dental plan! Lisa needs braces!
In this classic Season 04 episode of the Simpsons, Mr Burns tries to take away the Power Plant Union’s dental plan in exchange for one measly keg of beer. I am positive that Carl says the singular word “meeting,” not the plural “meetings,” meaning these men are risking thousands of dollars just so they can drink a few beers in plastic red cups. Standing in line, Homer has the feeling that something is wrong…if he could just put his finger on it. Lenny: So long dental plan! Marge: Lisa needs braces! Dental plan! Lisa needs braces! Dental plan! Lisa needs braces! Finally, Homer’s brain kicks into second gear and he realizes “if we give up our dental plan…I’ll have to play for Lisa’s braces!” Instantly., he turns into a pre-incarceration Jimmy Hoffa and rallies the troops to reject Burns’ offer:
For whatever reason, Mr. Burns takes Homer’s unusual approach to negotiation, such as ingesting beer, coffee and watermelon right before their first meeting. His swift exit to pee makes Burns think Homer is some kind of brilliant backroom tactician. He gives the plant workers their dental plan back on the condition that Homer resign as head of the union, at which point Burns realizes he was dealing with a supreme moron all along, a knuckle-dragging mouth breather from sector 7G:
Anyway, as the 1920s roared on and movies became more popular, straight white teeth became a prerequisite for even getting in a casting agents office, whereas the British still gave a shit about things like craft, skill, and talent. American teeth got whiter while British teeth stayed the same. This didn’t make British teeth any uglier.Most young British actors just eschewed the veneer thing. In some cases, a scraggly tooth adds character, like with American singer-songwriter Jewel:
British youth who grew up in the interwar years had higher rates of dental fluorosis than American or Irish youth (Wong 15). It didn’t matter that dental fluorosis is a common disorder, “characterized by hypo-mineralization of tooth enamel caused by ingestion of excessive fluoride during enamel formation,” it can make a person’s teeth discoloured and brown, appearing as a range of unappealing visual changes in enamel causing degrees of intrinsic tooth discolouration (Bonetti 3). It does not mean the teeth are unhealthy, per se, but their discolouration can result in a checkered smile, which is why dental fluorosis is the main reason people oppose fluoride in water. People want straight white teeth. What if you could only pick one though? I’d go white. I wouldn’t wanna end up with teeth that looked like “baked beans.”
Yuck. Anyway, most people’s teeth aren’t that bad, but even celebrities who are presently known for their winning smiles, once had tooth trouble.Tom Cruise is probably the most extreme example. Look at the discolouration in the “before” photo.
I think it’s quite safe to say that Cruise would never have been considered for, much less landed the roles he did in movies such as Risky Business (1983), All the Right Moves (1983), Top Gun (1986), The Color of Money (1986), Rain Main (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996), Jerry Maguire (1996), Without Limits (1998), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Magnolia (1999), Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Elizabethtown (2005), Ask The Dust (2006), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Lions for Lambs (2007), Tropic Thunder (2008), Valkyrie (2008), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Jack Reacher (2012), Oblivion (2013), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), The Mummy (2017), American Made (2017), Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Mission: Impossible 7 (2023), and Mission Impossible 8 (2024). But I could be wrong? Does that Tom Cruise with the discoloured tooth in the “Before” photo strike you as movie star material?
[QUICK DIGRESSION ON CRUISE’S TALENT: It’s too bad Cruise has spent his last 10-12 years working in actions films. I know a lot of people disagree, but I think he’s got magnificent acting chops. Tom Cruise’s greasy politician opposite Meryl Streep’s muckraking reporter in Lion for Lambs was a stroke of genius on director Robert Redfords’s part. I love the look of indignation on Cruise’s face when Streep starts listing his Ivy League bonafides and he asks her “[a]re you asking me to apologize for an achievement?” The ensuing staredown is one of the better staredowns of the decade. There’s one in Doubt (2008), also featuring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman that’s not to be missed. And Cruise’s scene with his dying father in Magnolia is a masterclass.I really hope PaulThomas Anderson only asked for one take. Any more would have been sadistic.]
ANYWAY, back to teeth. Not everyone can afford to look like this. This is a fact.
But this should be a good thing. Beauty should not be centralized, or homogenized, so that there is only one definition of it. Here’s me & my cat Cookie last Christmas.
Because normal people aren’t financially able to make their teeth consistent. Seriously. Have you seen those But what about places that don’t have fluoride? Are they paradises of straight white teeth? Or do dentist and orthodontists have to resort to bizarre tactics to straighten out people’s teeth?
See, England failed to mandate the fluoridation of its tap water decades before the United States did, with the result that “[o]nly 1-20% of water in the UK is fluoridated…[w]hereas, 60-80% of water in the US is fluoridated.” Eventually all American cities capitulated and now have fluoride in their tap water, resulting in consistently whiter and brighter smiles.
Montreal remains the last major city in North America that does not fluoridate its water (Chung, Montreal Gazette). This explains what Leonard Cohen was talking about when he sang about “beautiful French girls with terrible teeth” back in his ladies man folkie persona, an odd mix, but one he was able to pull off. More recent practitioners of the country-folk genre have been less successful in styling themselves sex symbols, even if their songs are every bit as good as Cohen’s, for my money. I mean, have you heard this Wilco song? It is nothing more or less than a really long, really good Wilco song. Dig it:
my father said what I had become…no one should be
And Tweedy got through the whole song without making fun of the poor dental health of (probably poor) French Canadians! C’mon Lenny. You were no physical specimen yourself. Yes, we all love “So Long, Marianne.” And you can get head on as many unmade beds as you want. But there are beautiful girls everywhere, with fine teeth, including Montreal. Anyway, it seems Cohen never really wrote the line. So,to whoever wrote it: You are a dick.
As of 2022, Ireland remains the only European country that does not fluoridate its tap water. This creates a wealth of opportunity for studies. What differences are there in the teeth of residents of Northern Ireland and those from the Republic of Ireland?Well, as mentioned above, enamel fluorosis, is roughly 20% higher in the Republic of Ireland than in Northern Ireland (Neville 53).
The disorder cannot weaken the teeth but it can change their physical appearance, leading people to believe that there is something wrong with their teeth, particularly in instances of intrinsic tooth discolouration (Neville 54). This tends to lead to excessive brushing, which can lead to gum issues.
Care should be taken to educate the youth of Ireland, both Northern and Republican, that enamel fluorosis is not the result of excessive brushing; it is simply a side-effect of fluoridated water. This trend holds true in the Emerald Isle, where Marisol Tellez, a graduate of and associate professor at the Kornberg School of Dentistry at Temple University and also the current director for the Centre of Public Health is dubious about government mandated “educational programs” (62). Tellez firmly believes Ireland should fluoridate its water. In a 2016 article co-written with Mark S. Wolff, the two writers argued that “fluorides and sealants have been shown to reduce [cavities] in populations, making fluoride interventions a large part of the dental public health effort” (64).
Homer: Gimme the bat, Marge. Gimme the bat! Gimme the bat bat booo ooooh! Ha ha! (sees own reflection in mirror) Ahhhhhh!
Marge (dragging Homer into the walk-in fridge): You stay here till you’re no longer insane. Hmm. Chili would be good tonight.
So, in conclusion, the British don’t have worse teeth, they simply have less boring teeth with “more character and personality” (Neville 53). The Northern Irish don’t have significantly worse teeth than their non-fluoridated cousins to the South, but people from the Republic of Ireland do have more cavities (referred to as “dental caries” for some obscure reason known only to those who work in the discipline (Ullah 842).
This is why people are so afraid to switch jobs. Every discipline has its own proprietary syntax, acronyms, slang, nomenclature, and lexicon, making even something as mathematically simple as tallying cavities sounds like a fucking incredibly complex responsibility that only four people in the entire world could properly do. (Right, we don’t say “do” anymore in corporate environments. We say “carry out” or “execute"“ because who fuckin’ cares.
Does anyone who reads this blog, all 112 of you, know the name of the British Dentist who torments Ralph with the Big Book of British Smiles? Furthermore, does anyone know why he never became a recurring character? Did Springfield even get another dentist after he “forgot to turn the gas off.” (Nitrous oxide, in case you were wondering.) Someone told me his name is Doctor Wolfe, though I tend to think this is untrue. Wouldn’t his name be on the front? Making his name B. Hoffman?
Oh shit…nevermind. The above still is from the episode where Bart & Lisa graduate a single year of military academy and Marge tells them they’re going to Disneyland. Yay! Disneyland! Then they pull in here, at the damn dentist’s. So I guess the other dentist was Dr. Wolfe. And maybe he really did have a problem “leaving the gas on” of “huffing ether” as John Irving liked to call it in The Cider House Rules.
Dr. Wolfe is far funnier than Doctor Marvin Monroe, and his acerbic wit would have bounced perfectly off other perennially pissed off characters like Moe, Mr. Burns, Kent Brockman, and whoever the hell the guy in the Bee Suit man is named. (I just checked. It’s Pedro Chespirito.)
Look at those perfectly straight pearly whites. Not American teeth though. Mexican teeth.
I’m not ashamed to admit that this projection of future-Lisa without braces scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. I didn’t find the “the mirror! [dramatic pause] THE MIRROR!” scene scary, but maybe because it was a homage I didn’t know about?
Anyway, goodbye Dr. Wolfe, is that is your real name.
We hardly knew ye. Seriously. We didn’t even learn your first name. Hopefully you didn’t get too high on that nitrous oxide. And good for Lisa and her new braces, which are so insanely frightening, Santa’s Little Helper can’t even look at her.
Works Cited:
Bonetti, Debbie. Clarkson, Jan E. “Fluoride Varnish for Caries Prevention: Efficacy and Implementation.” Caries Research. Volume 1: 1-5.
CDC. "Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century". Center for Disease Control and Prevention. April 26 2013.
Chung, Jason. Opinion: It’s time for Montreal to fluoridate its drinking water. Montreal Gazette, 10 May, 2017.
Ferguson, Will. Ferguson, Ian. How to Be a Canadian: Even If You Already Are One. (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007.)
H. Whelton, E. Crowley, D. O'Mullane, M. Donaldson, M. Cronin, V. Kelleher. “Dental caries and enamel fluorosis among the fluoridated population in the Republic of Ireland and non-fluoridated population in Northern Ireland in 2002.” Community Dental Health. 2006 Mar: 23(1): 37-43.
Powell, Naomi. “Ireland reviews water fluoridation.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. 2014 Jul 8; 186(10): E343–E344.
Ruben, Neal. “At a loss over dental floss.” The Detroit News. 22 Aug, 2018.
Sambunjak, Dario. W Nickerson, Jason. Poklepovic Pericic. Johnson, Trevor, Imai, Pauline. Tugwell, Peter and Worthington, Helen V. “Flossing for the management of periodontal diseases and dental caries in adults.” Cochrane Database System Review. 2019 Apr 23: 4(4).
Neville BW, Chi AC, Damm DD, Allen CM (13 May 2015). Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology (4th ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences. pp. 52–54.
Sergrave, Kelly. America Brushes Up: The Use and Marketing of Toothpaste and Toothbrushes in the Twentieth Century. (London: MacFarland & Company, 2014).
Tellez, Marisol, Wollfm Mark S. “The Public Health Reach of High Fluoride Vehicles: Examples of Innovative Approaches.” Caries Research. Apr 22 2016: Volume 1:61-67.
Winnicot, D.W. The Child, The Family And The Outside World. (London: Da Capo Lifelong Books, 1992).
Wong MC, Glenny AM, Tsang BW, Lo EC, Worthington HV, Marinho VC (January 2010). “Topical fluoride as a cause of dental fluorosis in children”. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (1): CD007693.
Ullah, Rizwan. Zafar, Mohammed Sohail. Shahani, Nazish. “Potential fluoride toxicity from oral medicaments: A review.” Iran Journal of Basic Medical Science. 2017 Aug; 20(8): 841–848.
Works Consulted
The apocryphal Leonard Cohen poem, song lyric or story can also be found here as of January 25 2022: https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/menum-menum.1989296/. I could not find the line in any of his works.
And I also consulted this scene because it kicks ass. It has nothing to do with the article but…why is the bathroom painted in such intense red?