As the Bill O'Reilly affair underscores, what writer Maureen Orth tagged the Celebrity-Industrial Complex includes lots of journalists, including ones on the right.

"Roger Ailes is out at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox News. Michael Flynn is out at the White House. Those three names — the head of the most powerful cable news network, the highest-rated cable news personality, and the national-security adviser — represent a stunning wave of resignations and terminations," attorney-journalist David French just wrote in The National Review.

"But this isn’t scalp-taking, it’s scalp-giving. Time and again prominent conservative personalities have failed to uphold basic standards of morality or even decency. Time and again the conservative public has rallied around them, seeking to protect their own against the wrath of a vengeful left. Time and again the defense has proved unsustainable as the sheer weight of the facts buries the accused."

For sure, such flaws cut many ideological ways, all the more so in a media universe in which being provocative can be more important than being right or vaguely precise. Celebrity can trump talent (and ethical weakness). I asked Tennessee-based French Sunday night why the right was different from the left.

"Ever since the Clinton administration and the continued Democratic embrace of the Clinton machine more broadly, I've had a low view of the left's respect for civility, decency and integrity when those values conflicted with short-term political victories. I used to think that the right, for all its flaws, was different. With notable exceptions (like my own National Review colleagues and a number of others who've maintained their respect for vital religious and cultural values in the face of strong headwinds), I no longer do. Perhaps I was naive."

So French is notable in chiding the right from the right, and writing how "the pattern is repeating itself with the younger generation of conservative celebrities."

In our email chat, he elaborated, "The bottom line is that it is incredibly difficult to maintain your support for essential, core values when maintaining those values may mean surrendering power/control in the short-term. Many, many people on both sides of the aisle fail that test."

And this addendum from his opus: "The sharp rise and meteoric fall of both Tomi Lauren and Milo Yiannopoulos were driven by much the same dynamic that sustained O’Reilly for years, even in the face of previous sexual-harassment complaints — Lahren and Yiannopoulos were 'fighters' who 'tell it like it is.'"

So is anything to come of O'Reilly's fall? Or is it some media equivalent of the United Airlines mess, where the competitive landscape probably assures the airlines continue to operate with great success, packing in the consumer (with knees jammed to their chests in economy)?

"O’Reilly’s fall can be an important act of public hygiene, but only if it represents the beginning of the end of a conservative culture that makes us behave like the cultural enemies we purport to despise. Otherwise conservatives will hand the left more scalps, forfeit more public trust and ultimately lose because of their single-minded quest to win."

A Trump-inspired Sunday newspaper bonus

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle ran ads from Doug Derwin, a Silicon Valley investor who wants Elon Musk to end his cozy friendship with Trump. His full-page ads, "called on the Tesla and SpaceX leaders to 'stand up against Trump,' citing the fact that the new president is a 'disaster for the fight against climate change.'” (Recode) Don't worry, TV sales guys and gals, "Derwin has also promised to run critical television ads in the coming days."