Juan Williams, whose conversation with Bill O’Reilly on The Radio Factor has been the subject of a week’s worth of cable and print stories, has written about being brought into the fray, and being labeled a “happy negro.” He writes in Time magazine that he was “astounded” to hear O’Reilly was being attacked “on the basis of that radio conversation as a ‘racist’”

That twisted assumption led me to say publicly that the attacks on O’Reilly amounted to an effort to take what he said totally out of context in an attempt to brand him a racist by a liberal group that disagrees with much of his politics. But the out-of-context attacks on O’Reilly picked up speed and ended up on CNN, where one commentator branded me a “Happy Negro” for allowing O’Reilly to get by with making racist comments without objection.

This is so far from the truth of the conversation on the radio that it is beyond a matter of words being taken out of context. This is a pathetic cowardly, personal attack against me intended to damage my credibility and invalidate any support I offer to O’Reilly against the charges that he is a racist.