The words “censor” and “censorship” get tossed around with tedious regularity. Too often, when a message fails to find an audience, its author, like a porcupine hopped up on Red Bull, gets all prickly and cries “censorship,” with images of Nazi book burnings or officious medieval prelates impaling heretics on toasting forks and roasting them over open flames, like s’mores.

Censorship seems positively un-American. The Statue of Liberty holds a lamp in her hand, maybe so that we can all read in the dark. People who know nothing about the Constitution have some vague notion that there’s a First Amendment that gives them the right to say whatever they want, whenever they want. Anyone accused of censorship gets painted as a pinched bluestocking, or even a fascist, out to trample free expression.

But the point-in-chief we’ve lost sight of is that the failure of a writer or artist to find an audience, or another’s refusal to provide that audience, isn’t the same thing as shredding the Constitution through censorship.

Prompting these reflections is an article I came across about librarians and the bulwark they often provide against censorship. What caught my attention was a reference to gadfly Michael Moore, who credits librarians for “rescuing” (his word) his book Stupid White Men. Putting aside the question of whether a book titled Stupid Black Men could ever be published, it seems the Great Carcass’s publisher, HarperCollins, wouldn’t publish the book unless he diluted some of his vitriol against George W. Bush. Apparently, librarians launched a letter-writing campaign to the publisher, which reversed its decision to demand revisions. The Constitution was preserved, as was Moore’s right to continue to be a blowhard.

But none of this had anything to do with “censorship.” Censorship would occur if, as in ancient Rome, government officials were sitting around over amphorae of wine reading publications with a view to ferreting out dissent, then siccing the Empire’s attack dogs on offenders. In Moore’s case, as is the case with every author, the matter was a business transaction. Every day, publishers, with an eye to the bottom line, make decisions about the potential of a book in the marketplace and require revisions from authors. We can debate the impact of the publishing industry and its dumbing down of the national culture, but that’s a different column.

As a business enterprise, the publisher has the right to require of any author changes in a manuscript if it believes portions of it will hamper sales—or simply to decline to publish it if the author proves obdurate. But Moore retains his right to write whatever he wants. I retain the right to read it—or not. But most importantly, if Moore doesn’t like the publisher’s business decisions, he has the right to seek publication elsewhere. In the end, no author has a “right” to publication. Some things aren’t published—though some are—simply because they’re rubbish.

More recently, former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan wrote What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. In a remarkable display of disloyalty, McClellan, a pismire in the administration, claims to document the “lies” and “propaganda” of the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and other matters.

What’s interesting is that the book started out as a sober analysis of White House decision making. But the publisher didn’t like it. It was too dull. Evidence suggests that the publisher, Public Affairs, which has a history of left-leaning bias, required McClellan—as was its right—to goose up his screed. “Man bites dog” is more interesting than “Dog bites man,” so the book morphed into a Bush bash.

Here’s my question: Where were the librarians? (Shelving, perhaps.) Did they launch a letter-writing campaign to “rescue” McClellan’s book in its original form from the predatory hands of venal publishers? (No.) In what sense was Moore a victim of censorship but McClellan was not? And for that matter, why did the McClellan book get so much press when the mainstream media virtually ignored the more laudatory book written by former press secretary Ari Fleischer? (Gee, I wonder.

The Constitution is tough. But the First Amendment is even tougher. It grants to citizens the right of free speech, but it has nothing to say about how speech becomes free in a given context, in a given set of circumstances. If a religious college bars the production of the play The Vagina Monologues because the college’s authorities believe that the play runs contrary to the college’s system of religious values, has the play been “censored”? When your parents tell you to shut up, are they “censoring” you? When your school bars the publication of a controversial article in the student newspaper because of concerns about, say, the reputation of the article’s subject, has the article been “censored”? What about if the article contains material that could be regarded as racist? What if school authorities ban offensive cheers at athletic contests? Have students been “censored”? What supports our Constitution is tension, the ongoing tension created by a person’s exercise of free speech in an arena where other’s assert a right to suppress that speech.

Meanwhile, in elegant Latin, Roman censors might have asked about Moore, or McClellan, Isto pensitaris? (Or in homespun English, You get paid for this crap?)

Michael J. O’Neal, Ph.D., is a regular columnist for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Idaho. He can be reached through his website at http://thespeech-writer.com.