Had he ever left? Nasty Murdoch, that is...

The Financial Times' John Gapper thinks the nasty Rupert Murdoch is… back?

The Rupert Murdoch we all know and love (or love to hate) is an aggressive, insurgent media tycoon who prefers to fight against entrenched media forces and insult them while doing so.

The Rupert Murdoch we have seen in the past couple of years is a humble pussycat who says nice things about how News Corp has to learn to play nicely with the digital generation.

Thankfully, nasty Rupert seems to be back.

Had he every really left? Sure, Gapper is talking more specifically about the business end of News Corp., but surely there's more to Murdoch that one could describe as “nasty.”

How about agreeing with Glenn Beck that President Obama is a racist -- errr, made a “very racist comment”?

What about letting Fox News morph from a conservative cable news outlet to an all out partisan political operation?

We could spend an entire day rattling off the evidence that regular readers of this blog are already well aware of, but we'll save our breath.