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Bill O'Reilly was fired from Fox News and this is the internet's go-to joke

Here comes the same joke over and over again.

Sasha Lekach

on April 19, 2017

Someone else will be sitting behind his desk when Bill O'Reilly, the long-time host of Fox News' prime-time cash cow The O'Reilly Factor, returns from "vacation" next week.

On Wednesday, 21st Century Fox announced that the longtime conservative talk show host would not return to the network after advertisers dropped the show in droves following multiple allegations of sexual harassment against him. Naturally, that caused everyone online to make the same joke and probably made O'Reilly wish he could go back in time and name the show something else.

Once news of the host's departure was made public, the internet was quick to revel in schadenfreude, as O'Reilly had become synonymous with Fox News over the last twenty years and no one could figure out how so many women's complaints had been repeatedly ignored at the network. (Especially after the network's former chairman, Roger Ailes, was forced out under somewhat similar circumstances less than a year ago amid promises from Fox News that it was definitely committed to doing better.)

So of course everyone online quickly figured out the perfect pun to celebrate O'Reilly's departure and went for it.

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Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that O'Reilly and Fox News had paid $13 million over several years to five people to keep quiet over sexual harassment claims. More accusations of sexual harassment were reported since and two had already been public. O'Reilly has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

In the past two and a half weeks since the Times' story broke, at least 50 advertisers pulled out of the Factor and O'Reilly, who went on a supposedly pre-planned vacation to Italy last week, had been off the air.

He was scheduled to return on Monday, but now he's never coming back to his show, the self described "no-spin zone." He's actually, literally no longer a factor.

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How's that for no spin?

Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.