There's never been a better time to fire Bill O'Reilly

The Fox News host might be fired at the very moment the toxic ideology he represents has taken up residence in the White House

Bill O'Reilly.
(Image credit: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)

BIll O'Reilly, the king of cable news, is currently "on vacation," which may be a prelude to "spending more time with his family." After The New York Times reported that he and Fox News have paid out settlements totalling $13 million to at least five women who said O'Reilly harassed them, advertisers began to flee; after dozens pulled their spots, the total ad time on the show was cut in half. That, of course, means that for the moment O'Reilly is not bringing in the money he used to, and no TV personality can survive that for long. As Gabriel Sherman of New York reports, "Two highly placed Fox News sources say 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch would like O'Reilly to be permanently taken off the air, while his father, Rupert, and older brother, Lachlan, are more inclined to keep him."

So O'Reilly's future is in doubt, at the very moment that the ideology he represents has taken up residence in the White House. But that's precisely the problem: O'Reilly's is a rhetoric of anger, of righteous victimhood, of resentment and recrimination. It doesn't do nearly as well with someone as sympatico as Donald Trump in the presidency.

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.