Yeah, you can shut up now.

And just like that, Bill O'Reilly's gone from Fox News. I assumed he would never go. Like asthma or acid reflux.

As Capone with taxes, O'Reilly was undone not by his deeper crimes (lying, bullying, using patriotism to bring out the worst in scoundrel America) but by his awful, loutish behavior around women. It was less than three weeks ago, April 1st of all days, that The New York Times ran their in-depth feature on O'Reilly “thriving” despite the numerous sexual harassments suits against him. They tallied up five, added details, and I seriously thought that would be the end of it. We elected a man president of the United States who's done worse. But then the calls for boycotts of his show. And they stuck. They worked. They actually worked. Alex Wagner has an interesting piece over at The Atlantic about how O'Reilly can blame Trump for all of this. If Trump hadn't arrived in the awful, lying, sexual harassing manner he did, classless and idiotic, stupeflyingly oblivious to how hated he is around the world, most folks would be carrying on as normal. Now they're riled up. Women especially. Thank god. 

There were calls for boycotts, they worked, and advertisers fled in droves. But I still thought he would stick. He was Fox's most popular guy. He was the John Wayne of their sad little studio: tall and craggy-faced and sometimes calm but mostly angry. He seethed with righteous, racist anger. He was less the benevolent Wayne in “Liberty Valance” than the awful Wayne in “The Searchers” or “Red River.” Now what do they got? Hannity? He's the Rory Calhoun of their sad little studio. Tucker Carlson? He's Jeffrey Hunter.  

So both O'Reilly and Ailes were undone the same way. Not really a shocker. You hire a bunch of ruthless, domineering, craggy-faced guys, pair them with hot young things, sprinkle over everything a sense that America's best days were pre-civil rights and pre-feminism, when white men were men and all women were sex objects, well, don't be surprised at what grows in that awful, backward experiment. 

According to Joe Muto in his insider look at Fox News, “An Atheist in the FOX Hole,” O'Reilly always asked, “So who's the villain in the story?” To get the outrage, you needed the target: “A name and preferably a photo that could be splashed onscreen for the host to point to and say, This is the bad guy. This is the guy hurting you.”

So who's the villain in the story? The one Bill O'Reilly least expected. 

EXTRA CREDIT:

• Stephen Colbert calls upon “Stephen Colbert” to say good-bye to Papa Bear.
• In the wake of the allegations, Jia Tolentino reads Bill O'Reilly's 1998 novel ... about a TV newsman who commits murders after being fired.
• The Daily Show's Trevor Noah says goodbye with some pretty angry, racist shit O'Reilly spewed over the years. 
• Randy Rainbow parodies the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein song “Just My Bill” with some of those same O'Reilly rants. 
• Finally, Stephen Colbert again, reeling, and reading from that '98 novel.