"Rupert Murdoch hasn't ruined Wall Street Journal!" proclaims Tunku Varadarajan, the Forbes writer who used to write the op-ed column of the…um…Wall Street Journal.

Let us give Murdoch his due: The Journal’s news stories are now shorter, sharper, newsier and more relevant. The paper is expanding. He is the only press mogul who does not have to butcher his payroll and put reporters on the dole. And yet, people complain, which can only lead one to conclude that there is an ad hominem foundation to many critical evaluations of the Murdoch Journal: To wit, many people simply do not like Rupert Murdoch. In fact, he scares people.

Okay guys, time for a quick poll:

Does the fact that Varadarajan used to work for Murdoch mean we should trust him more or less when the Columbia professor says that "Murdoch phobia shows what a soft, homogenized, emasculated world we live in. Murdoch phobia is also the result of the press obsessing about (and inflating) its own importance."

Funny…I read that last word as "impotence" and it made a lot more sense. And, funny enough, Tunku doesn't pepper his story with personal anecdotes about working for Murdoch, even though the Forbes opinion editor was working under the new Wall Street Journal as late as last year (Murdoch and Varadarajan overlapped by a couple months at WSJ). If first-hand experience is an advantage and not a sign of a lack of objectivity, why not mention how nice and personable the media mogul was at your going away party?

So according to someone who used to work for Rupert Murdoch (and is in no way personally biased about this story), being scared of the Australian and his dragon-lady wife makes you a pussy. Now can someone give Mr. Varadarajan his old job back, please?