Bill O'Reilly: Number Cruncher Extraordinaire

Maybe I slept through too many statistics courses when I was younger but I'm having a hard time making sense of this claim:


Umm...what? How does having a larger population affect life-expectancy? Having ten times the population obviously means having ten times the accidents and crimes (and everything else); it's pretty much the definition of the term "per capita" but again, what does it have to do with life-expectancy? Canada's life-expectancy is 10th in the world while ours here in the States is 45th. They live on average a full two years longer than we do because what? They have less people? By that logic people in Vatican City should be living well into their 120's while the Chinese all die by 40. Or maybe Bill O'Reilly is merely a dishonest dolt who will say anything to discredit any health-care system besides his own despite statistical and empirical evidence to the contrary. The bar for getting your own television show in this country is set depressingly low.

(via)

[Update: Following up on my post about FOX News trashing the Netherlands the Dutch have similarly responded by using verifiable facts and figures to counter the slander put forth by people who most likely couldn't be bothered to visit that country before espousing their biased opinions as if they were true:


Sullivan has this to add:

The issue O'Reilly has with Holland is that, compared with the US in many respects, it values individual liberty.

Well said. If you have to trash someone else in order to make yourself look better, you probably don't look as good as you think you do. Unfortunately, this is what passes for introspection and honest self-assessment about our country amongst many on the political right these days.]