Multiple issues with the TextMesh component

Hi all

I'm making TextMeshes for some of my objects by duplicating the GameObject and adding a TextMesh component. This is my method:

     private void __buildTextDuplicate()
     {
         this.__textDuplicate = Instantiate(this.gameObject,
                                             this.gameObject.transform.position,
                                             this.gameObject.transform.rotation) as GameObject;
         this.__textDuplicate.transform.parent = this.gameObject.transform;
         this.__textDuplicate.name = "Text";
         
         // Remove our components
         Destroy(this.__textDuplicate.GetComponent<Element>());
         Destroy(this.__textDuplicate.GetComponent<MeshCollider>());
         
         // Set the text material
         Material textMaterial = ResourceManager.getResource<Material>("Materials", "text");
         this.__textDuplicate.GetComponent<MeshRenderer>().material = textMaterial;
         
         TextMesh textMesh = this.__textDuplicate.AddComponent<TextMesh>();
         
         // Setup the text options
         textMesh.characterSize = 0.1f;
         textMesh.fontSize = 100;
         textMesh.richText = false;
         textMesh.offsetZ = 0.01f;
         
         Font font = (Font)Resources.GetBuiltinResource(typeof(Font), "Arial.ttf");
         textMesh.font = Instantiate(font) as Font;
     }

My result looks like this:

Now, there are a number of issues here:

1) The text isn't alpha'd correctly. If I go into the inspector and set the font to None and then back to Arial again, sometimes it will correct itself.

2) The text is flipped horizontally. Why does this happen? The original geometry is Y up, Z towards camera.

3) This completely garbles my debug GUI text. Why would this happen if I'm using an instance of the Arial font instead of the original?

I guess it's pretty clear that my approach of programatically adding text to objects is wrong. Can anyone suggest a stable way of doing this?

Thanks, Ves