Faux News Host Thinks Americans Marry "Other Species"

You know, the Con's ignorance about basic science is just getting abjectly pathetic:

"Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade probably isn't quite sharp enough to realize why his comments this morning were a little crazy even for Fox News. It's a shame, because if he thought about it, he might be embarrassed.

Kilmeade was reflecting on a study that found married people fare better when it comes to Alzheimer's than divorcees. Fox News is "pro-family," so it might seem like the kind of study Kilmeade would approve of.

Alas, no. The Fox News personality took issue with where the study was done, which he said discredited the results. Alex Koppelman, who posted the video, explains:

Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, "We are -- we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other ..."

At this point, his co-host tried to -- in that jokey morning show way -- tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn't get the message, adding, "See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes.... Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."

We'll just skip right over the fact that people who advocate that sort of purity generally belong to white supremacist organizations, and get to the science. First off, how "pure" are their societies? Lessee:

Sweden: Of the 2007 population 13.4% (1.23 million) were born abroad.^[96] This reflects the inter-Nordic migrations, earlier periods of labour immigration, and later decades of refugee and family immigration. Sweden has been transformed from a nation of emigration ending after World War I to a nation of immigration from World War II onwards. In 2008, immigration reached its highest level since records began with 101,171 people moving to Sweden.^[97]

The largest immigrant groups living in Sweden as of 2008 consists of people born in Finland (175 113), Iraq (109 446), Former Yugoslavia (72 285), Poland (63 822), Iran (57 663), Bosnia and Herzegovina (55 960), Denmark (44 310), Norway (44310), Chile (28 118), Thailand (25 858), Somalia (25 159) and Lebanon (23 291). In the last decade most immigrants have come from Iraq, Poland, Thailand, Somalia and China.^[98]

Finland: The share of foreign citizens in Finland is 2.5 percent^[29] being among the lowest of the European Union countries. Most of them are from Russia, Estonia and Sweden.^[29]

Well, Swedes seem to be mutts, and while Finland looks "pure" on the surface, let's keep in mind their history, which seems to include a lot of people who weren't from Finland moving in and becoming Fins. Europeans have been sloshing around interbreeding for a damned long time. I didn't even bother to look at the genetic studies yet, but I doubt there's any sort of genetic markers that differentiate "pure" Swedes and Fins from all of those icky mixed breeds. Thus we dispense with the "purity" argument.

Moving on. Kilmeade says Americans keep marrying "other species." I do not think he knows what the word "species" means:

1. Biology.
   1. A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of interbreeding.
   2. An organism belonging to such a category, represented in binomial nomenclature by an uncapitalized Latin adjective or noun following a capitalized genus name, as in Ananas comosus, the pineapple, and Equus caballus, the horse.

Now, we could be generous and say he was using the term in a rather vulgar sense, but from the context he seems to believe that humans are really divided into biologically distinct species, which is utter and complete ignorant bullshit. Y'see, all humans are Homo sapiens, which are:

The modern species of humans, the only extant species of the primate family Hominidae.

Emphasis added specifically for Brian Kilmeade, who apparently never took high school biology.

And, finally, let us have a look at another statement Kilmeade made in that same segment:

"In America, we marry everybody. Some will marry Italians, the Irish...."

Yes, we do indeed marry the Irish, don't we, Brian? In fact, we may even marry people from the Irish parish of.... Kilmeade.

I do believe if you took a "purity" test, you'd flunk it. Imagine that.