Jackson Free Press

"The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with. ... It is a messed-up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended."

—Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana criticizing the A&E network's decision to suspend one of the stars of the reality show "Duck Dynasty" for making controversial statements about gay people during a magazine interview.

Why it stinks: Biblical scholars and people on the Internet with nothing better to do can argue what The Good Book says about who should wake up next to whom in the morning. Nor should it really come as a surprise that Jindal, a conservative Republican, would come to the defense of Robertson, a fellow Christian who earns his living making hunting equipment. Yet, as a conservative Republican, Jindal presumably adheres to the principles of the free market. In that light, A&E's decision to sanction Robertson is not an example of government censorship of an individual's right to engage in constitutionally protected speech. Rather, it was a business decision made by executives of A&E—a joint-partnership between privately owned Hearst Corp. and publicly owned The Walt Disney Company—who weighed the costs and benefits, and ultimately decided that doing nothing in response to Robertson's statements would hurt the company's bottom line. That's not messed up. That's capitalism.