With Glenn Beck and others hyping companies selling “gournet survival food”, it may be helpful to remember how easily people can be stampeded into doing stupid things by irresponsible things said on TV.<\/p>\n
It was 1973 – Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show on NBC, the show that most of the country watched after the late news.\u00a0\u00a0 ABC didn’t have network feed after 11 PM.\u00a0\u00a0 Most TV stations either turned off the transmitter after the news or had “test patterns” after 1 AM in the morning, as all decent peple were asleep by then.<\/p>\n
Johnny Carson was making some joke about politics, and the punch line to the joke was “And by tomorrow, there will be a shortage of toilet paper”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There was no impending shortage of toilet paper – he was joking about the fecal matter from a politician.<\/p>\n
That’s all it took – the next morning, the masses were off and running – stampeding to their local supermaket and filling up shopping carts with a 5 year supply of toilet paper.\u00a0\u00a0 Supply chains are built around the premise of predictable demand.\u00a0 Charmin doesn’t keep 5 years worth of toilet paper sitting in a warehouse – so the joke quickly turned into reality.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Despite Johnny Carson explaining the next night that it was only a joke, that didn’t undo the damage.\u00a0\u00a0 Once people panic as a group, the damage is done.\u00a0\u00a0 It took months to return the supply back to normal.<\/p>\n
The problem coincided with a newsprint shortage in 1973, caused by labor strikes in Canada.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Newspapers were scrambling to print their paper on any type of paper they could find.\u00a0\u00a0 The paper in the small town where I lived resorted to printing the entire paper on pink, blue and green paper stock.\u00a0\u00a0 Having to divert pulp into making toilet paper just made that situation even more of a problem.<\/p>\n
Have you heard there is a peanut butter shortage?\u00a0\u00a0 All the people on Radio and TV are telling us about it, so it must be true.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The 4 pound can of it I bought in 2008 is getting a bit rancid by now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With Glenn Beck and others hyping companies selling “gournet survival food”, it may be helpful to remember how easily people can be stampeded into doing stupid things by irresponsible things said on TV. It was 1973 – Johnny Carson was … Continue reading