Kuala Lampur, May 2 -- When Bill O'Reilly doubled down on his mockery of Malaysia - scoffing that Malaysians "can't even buy a little hat" and citing a household income figure of US$5,731 versus US$42,220 in the US - he wasn't just being flippant. He was showcasing the danger of lazy statistics. By cherry-picking figures without context, he painted a distorted picture of economic despair - and in doing so, revealed a worldview still steeped in colonialist condescension. Like many such soundbites, the truth lies in what he left out.

A single number doesn't define prosperity

The US$42,220 figure cited by O'Reilly comes from the USCensus Bureau's annual household survey, the Current Population Survey (CPS). It refers to the median personal...