Bill O'Reilly continues to take the pretend high road on this Jesse Jackson "nuts" business, despite the fact that he was the one who aired a portion of the civil rights leader's hot mic conversation in the first place. Rumors have been swirling about what else was said in the unaired portion of the convo, and earlier today a reliable source told TVNewser that Jackson used the word nigger, as in "[Barack Obama is] trying to tell niggers what to do" but did not use the word to describe Obama (just the rest of black America).

Anyway, O'Reilly confirmed this bit of news to Shepard Smith, but said he hadn't intended to release that portion of the conversation because it was just "trash talk." "I'm not in the business of hurting Jesse Jackson, because it does hurt Jesse Jackson. And I'm not in the business of creating some kind of controversy that is not relevant to the general subject: one civil rights leader disparaging another, over policy. So we held it back." What a sweetie. [TVNewser]