I'm curious -- what is it about this sort of incident that prevents you from wanting to refer to it as censorship? Is it because the book never hits the shelf in the first place?
The term censorship is commonly used in situations involving book challenges. A Google search on the words "banned books censorship" brings up 1,250,000 hits.
A valid question! The truth is, the word "censorship" is widely misused, particularly in the media today. If materials are truly "censored," then there is ultimately no way to get your hands on them, regardless of whether they were once on the shelves, or never made it there. True censorship implies control at a level that literally prevents the material from being distributed. I'm not surprised that your Google search brought up so many hits, simply because of the gross misuse of the word's meaning.
Many people don't like to hear it, but our freedom of speech includes the right to speak against -- or, in the case of a librarian, not to stock -- a book for whatever reason. Now, that same librarian can't disallow people from obtaining the book through other means. Big difference there.
There are different times in the history of different countries in which there were cases of true censorship: A king who scoured his kingdom for any books that spoke negatively of him, for instance, and had them all confiscated and burned. That was definitely censorship!
It just seems like whenever a bookstore says they won't carry a book (e.g. O.J.'s before it was pulled), or a librarian doesn't want a certain book on her shelves, or a teacher is uncomfortable with a particular book on a predetermined reading list, right away there are cries of "Censorship! Censorship!" Except, it's not censorship. It's freedom of speech. It might make some people angry, or indignant, or frustrated, but it's still not censorship.
And I think I've babbled enough!
