You hear from lots of sophisticated investors that it would be terrible if Mr. Jobs were forced out at Apple. How, they say, would that help Apple shareholders? But lots of other chiefs have lost their jobs because of options backdating, and several have even been indicted. However indispensable he may be, the notion that Mr. Jobs can't be touched because he's Steve Jobs is something terribly corrosive. If the S.E.C. is coming to the view that options backdating is just a peccadillo, as Silicon Valley has claimed all along, it should say so. But if it believes this is serious stuff, then it shouldn't be making excuses for Steve Jobs, as it appears to be doing. [From Joe Nocera, who worked on the 2001 Fortune story about the highway robbery of CEO pay, featuring Steve Jobs on the cover. Nocera's Times story requires subscription.]