Earlier this week, tucked at the bottom of page A14 in The Wall Street Journal, I saw a curious little story with the headline “Whole Foods Bars Executives From Web Forums.” The story says that the board of Whole Foods Market, “reacting to Internet postings by its chief executive, amended the company’s code of business conduct last week to sharply restrict online activities by the grocer’s officials. The new code bars top executives and directors from posting messages about Whole Foods, its competitors or vendors on Internet forums that aren’t sponsored by the natural-foods chain.”

So there you have it: The Whole Foods board has imposed restrictions on the entire executive team and all its directors because of the actions of one person—CEO John Mackey. As I wrote here in July (“Bad Behavior, CEO Style”), “Mackey … put his company’s $565 million acquisition of rival Wild Oats at risk by anonymously attacking and belittling Wild Oats and its CEO on Internet financial forums. Writing under the handle ‘Rahodeb,’ Mackey also anonymously questioned why anyone would buy Wild Oats stock and that the company was probably headed for bankruptcy—just before Whole Foods made its buyout bid.”

One might question why it took the Whole Foods board so long to deal with this issue. One might further question why the board opted to deal with an issue created by one man—the CEO—by taking a shotgun approach and issuing a broad code of conduct that affects company executives in general, instead of calling out the person who created the problem.

It’s just another example of how CEOs are all too frequently coddled and cosseted. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen much commentary in the blogosphere that takes the Whole Foods board to task for treating Mackey with such kid gloves. Even the Motley Fool, where one blogger called the board’s action “sad but overdue,” seemed to completely ignore the notion that the CEO is getting away with something that likely would have been a firing offense for any other Whole Foods employee.