Yeah, I think the part that makes this so controversial isn't that they exercised their discretion to screw him, which is absolutely expected, but that the court chose a total amount so large as to be newsworthy and garner sympathy for Jones and make people question the actions of the court by itself. The idea that some singular kook running a talk show could get a judgement that we rarely ever see levied upon major corporations that pour far more man hours into far more definable evil makes people who've never heard of the guy ask WTF.