As mentioned in Good Morning, News!, today I am admittedly suffering from a case of SOUR GRAPES after last night’s fluoridation defeat—but I swear I’m trying to be cool about it! Unfortunately today we’re having to deal with readers who have a case of YUMMY GLOATING GRAPES. These are anti-fluoridation people for whom winning is not enough; not only do they have to be regarded as “right” (they’re still not), they also want to exact the most vengeance per square inch by going into full “gloat mode.” Here are a couple of examples, both received after the results were announced.
Subject: Fluoride IGNORANCE
Hey Portland Mercury,
Now that fluoride has been voted down, I thought I would take a moment to tell you how much I used to enjoy reading your paper. I have lived in Portland for three years, am an educated professional, and was a self-confessed junkie of both Ann Romano’s and Dan Savage’s columns. I will find Dan’s column elsewhere and drop Ann’s altogether after the outrageously biased MAINSTREAM pro-fluoride argument I have ever seen. Super blech!!!!
Signed a former love,
Patricia
Subject: Too bad so sad
Denis T:
I’ve been impressed by your burgeoning journalism skills since we met at the OccuPie Portland event and I actually looked for your articles in a newspaper I have little affection for. Sorry you all decided to ride with the assclowns from the pro-fluoride lobby. There’s nothing stopping you from here on out to write about real methods to improve the dental health care of Portland kids if you indeed really care which I doubt. I won’t be reading about it anyway even if you do. There’s a reason we refer to your paper as the sMirkury.
Better luck next lifetime,
Christine
Nice people! (P.S. Gloating is a sign of insecurity, sooooooo….)
people on both sides of this issue need to get a fucking grip.
So, Patricia is going to limit her news intake to celebrity zingers and sex advice so as not to encounter an opinion contrary to her own. Sounds like another well-informed voter in the making.
“Now that fluoride has been voted down, I thought I would take a moment to tell you how much I used to enjoy reading your paper.”
Wow, this issue was that important to you? Due to a couple weeks of fluoride coverage, you can’t read the Mercury any more?
“I have lived in Portland for three years…”
Three whole years! Let me sit down and really stare you in the eyes so I can fully grasp the many important points about this community that you have to impart.
Perhaps this is your cue WSH to consider providing some information about the rest of the election? Like the other two levies or the elected candidates? Not eveyone is obsessed with this stupid fluoride debate.
@ pork chop
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that. Nice thought, though!
SHE’S LIVED HERE THREE WHOLE YEARS.
Wow. I never thought people could get butt-hurt from winning…
I’ve lived here for more than three years and can say, without a shadow of doubt, that my life was way better when I drank fluoride. I’m devastated by knowing that we’re going to have to wait for fluoride. I miss it. I used to love pouring it all over my naked body. Mixing up some cool-aid-fluoride on a hot day. Filling my swimming pool with muddled fluoride water. It was dope. Now life doesn’t really mean anything. I mean, what does it MEAN? Nothing. We’re never gonna get fluoride and everyone gonna die, soon.
Cheers to Denis T and the rest of the Mercury staff for taking a position on a controversial issue that most likely alienated a large share of your readership. I’m sorry to see some readers of your rag retreat farther into the ether of extremism and science fiction–if they think the Mercury is mainstream they should try living in Branson, Missouri for a bit–but, you win some you lose some. There are some interesting and very relevant articles out on the web today that shed some light on the peculiar and tragic outcome of the great fluoride debate of 2013. “Why Rational People buy into Conspiracy Theories,” in yesterday’s New York Times has some salient observations applicable to the anti-fluoride camp and even the gloating going on in the wake of the election. NPR (another “mainstream” news outlet) has a piece today on the fallout of the anti-vaccine movement in the UK–in short a measles epidemic. I have lived in Portland for 3 years and will continue to read the Mercury, the Oregonian, the Williamette Weekly, NYT, WSJ, Mother Jones and whatever Noam Chomsky’s currently peddling because dismissing reputable journalism because you disagree with an OpEd is a fast track to ignorance. Again, thanks for your stand and keep up the good work.
After that “20 Phrases to Write on Your Anti-Fluoride Sign” piece you flogged endlessly a couple weeks ago, the violin on which I was planning to play a sad tune for you shrank down to the size of a fluoride ion. (I might be able to dig up a slightly-used sad trombone, though.)
Are tears fluoridated?
I was kind of agnostic on the fluoride issue (I just happen to lean slightly toward the anti side), so I’m not particularly inclined to gloat in the first place. But if y’all want to keep running your mouths about how we’re all going to lose our teeth within a year, or how so many of us were duped by junk science, or how many people you thought were intelligent turned batshit crazy over this… I’d be more than happy to start.
Portland Mercury has shown itself to be a failure at recognizing the truth, or worse yet just complete sell outs.
And you still don’t get it. The arrogance to say “don’t fuck this up Portland”. It was the Portland Mercury that fucked up.
Look into the facts and use common sense. I don’t see how adding industrial toxic waste to the water is a good idea. Or even if you think it’s an effective dental treatment, the public water isn’t there to mass medicate people.
It was really low to jump on the ad hominem bandwagon that the corporate snakes use to justify their dumping of toxic waste in the water.
“It’s never a good idea to take health advice from the same publications that exhort you to make your own porno… ” @MediaMonarchy on twitter
This is not gloating. I truly would wish that everyone who is spouting things about the “crazy, anti-science conspiracy theorists, fear-mongering paranoids who hate the kids and are racists” take a real listen to what we have been saying. This should not be a divisive political issue.
Fluoridation is statistically proven (and admitted in a HKHP debate too btw) to not reduce tooth decay.
There is not and never was a “dental crisis” in Portland. The 2012 SMILE survey that HKHP tried to suppress shows that. Portland’s decay rate is better than areas that fluoridate!
The “fluoride” in fluoridation comes from the industrial toxic waste of fertilizer production. It is not any sort of natural “mineral”, nor is it the same kind of fluoride used in toothpaste. If it weren’t sold to cities for fluoridation it would have to be disposed of as toxic waste!
Fluoride is not required by the body for any reason. It is a cumulative toxin that causes numerous problems with the body. Pro-fluoridationists admit that fluorosis is a disease caused by excessive consumption of fluoride. It causes a disruption in the bone matrix which is visible on the teeth but affects all bones in the body. It disrupts the thyroid, calcifies the pineal gland and is a neurotoxin.
Even if you think it is safe and effective as a dental treatment. Ingesting it is not a proper way to use it! Fluoride is already available as toothpaste and it’s used *topically* outside the teeth. You don’t eat your toothpaste.
The public water is not an appropriate way to medically treat the entire city without their consent, without a diagnosis, without a means to regulate the “medicine”.
And then there’s the matter of efficiency. Only about 1% of the water is ingested the rest is used to flush toilets, hose of driveways, showers, etc.
For fuck’s sake any way you cut it there’s about a 100 reason why fluoridation is totally FUCKED. Yet the Merc did it’s best to demonize, discredit and mock people who are trying to stop this insane policy?
People have been duped, or are in the pocket of the extensive forces shoving fluoride on us. I hope everyone will figure it out, not just the 60% majority that voted against it. I think people will more and more.
Rather than have “sour grapes” that you lost what was a little game, be happy that you won’t be living in yet another city with toxic waste added to the water. If you really really love fluoride that much you can still get it at the store in a tube of toothpaste. That’s your choice. Let people have a choice in the toxic-waste/medicine they ingest.
@Jay Sun, So glad you wrote these florid midnight-to-1:05 AM screeds about an election that’s already decided.
Who could possibly think you’re all batshit dum dums now?
Shit, word choice. I bet a bunch of your scholarly pals have google alerts for “florid.”
Jay Sun, if you were my neighbor I would have eaten 20 tubes of flouridated toothpaste the minute I saw you coming just so I didn’t have to listen to your screeching voice tell me about TEH CHEMICLES again. The election is over, there’s not going to be flouride in our water, now STFU.