While we’re talking about Armstrong Williams, who offered an apology today to readers for failing to disclose his Department of Education-funneled payments, let’s not forget his association with Michael Jackson. As the New York Daily News reported last February,

Talk about strange bedfellows: Michael Jackson has turned to one of his harshest critics, conservative columnist Armstrong Williams, to help dig him out of his child-sex mess….

Williams denied he is now an official spokesman but appeared on two news shows yesterday with a new take on the man whose makeovers and child sleepovers he has slammed.

“I was more surprised after speaking to him,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I always perceived him as someone feeble and weak and soft-spoken. I was stunned at the strength of character.”

Williams also carried a complaint from Jacko: “He felt as though we in the media had gone overboard in our criticism.” The King of Pop is fighting charges that he sexually molested a cancer-stricken boy at Neverland Ranch.

In December, Williams wrote that Jackson’s admission on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he had kids over for sleepovers is proof of his “inability to develop a moral or spiritual foundation.”

Strange.