It was one of those nights that all parents dread. Just as I was urging the children to go to bed and looking forward to a long soak in a hot tub filled with bubbles, the kids informed me they needed school supplies for a certain class the next day.

It had already been a particularly depressing day. Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident while being chased by paparazzi in France, and the media were taking a bashing for it.

As I reminded several people in different conversations I had that weekend, if readers wouldn't buy the scandal rags or watch the pseudo-news shows on television featuring pictures and stories hawked by stalker journalists, then eventually the paparazzi would soon find themselves without a market to peddle their wares.

You can't always blame the messenger. In this case, the buyer is just as guilty.

So, instead of a comforting moment where all thoughts of renegade journalists were thrown out with the bath water, I found myself searching for my shoes and keys and driving toward the local 24-hour discount store.

As I waited in the checkout line, I found myself listening to two men standing behind me.

They were talking about computers and frankly, as an avowed Internet addict - I was eavesdropping. Trying to make it look less obvious about what I was doing, I began eyeing the rack of magazines and newspapers the store displays in its checkout line and even picked one up and began glancing through it.

Within a few minutes, the two men began talking about the magazines displayed on the racks. One publication dealing with women's health issues particularly caught their attention.

"Why don't they just say something like 'health story inside?... one of the guys said. Why put 'menopause' on the front cover," he asked his friend.

"Well," his friend said, "it has to do with that freedom of speech thing."

"That freedom of speech thing," I thought. Not quite as elegantly put as I try to do it sometimes, but still the thought transfixed me as I thought of how satisfying it is to live in a country where citizens rights can be discussed so casually - anyplace and at anytime.

It also jolted me out of the ivory tower I tend to inhabit when thinking of the great unread masses in this country - those at whom I sometimes arrogantly sneer and categorize as the ones who never open a newspaper or even watch what passes for news on television.

They may be a silent majority, but they just might be very well aware of what is going on around them. And they are certainly aware of their rights as citizens of this country.

The men's conversation also reminded me of another aspect of the princess' death. No matter how tacky and inappropriate I feel such news coverage to be, freedom of speech also means the right of citizens to read or look at those same scandalous tabloids or titillating news shows.

I also thought it was highly ironic for those two men to have a discussion on freedom of speech in a store where those same rights had just been smudged.

A statement had already been issued from the store's corporate headquarters that publications featuring pictures of the hapless princess as she lay dying would not be sold in any of their locations.

What is this statement by the corporate honchos really saying to the rest of us? Isn't their decision to halt the sale of publications normally sold by their store a form of censorship? Are they setting themselves up to be the moral arbiters for the rest of us? Who gave them the power to decide what is right and what is wrong for the rest of us to read?

But let's also remind ourselves that it is fully within the First Amendment rights of the corporate executives to say whatever they want about these publications.

I've always fully believed that when you deny any citizen any one of the items which makes up the Bill of Rights, then you risk losing those rights yourself.

For if you let anyone muzzle your neighbor or prevent him from reading what he wants, bearing arms, having access to due process of the law, or any of the other rights we hold so dear, then what is to stop someone else from taking those rights away from you?

And this, I think, is what the corporate honchos of that store ultimately did - they took away their customers' rights to read what they want. Now there is no law that says this store has to stock any particular magazine or book, and rightly so. The government is not in the business (or shouldn't be) of telling businesses what they can or cannot sell.

But chain-store executives could simply have decided silently to let other businesses reap the profits made by the glorification of a public figure's tragic death.It doesn't matter that they believe those publications are pure trash and citizens shouldn't waste money on them - it is the citizens' constitutional right to buy and read that trash if they want to.

As to why the executives made this decision, well, they did say it was out of respect for the princess, and I suppose that could be perfectly true. But I suspect a more cynical reason. I think the corporate executives of this particular chain saw a way to make a buck out of this tragedy. They just weren't as overt about it as selling the tacky tabloids would have been. Instead I think they used the princess's death as an advertising gimmick.

That in anticipation of the backlash against the media for the role the paparazzi played in the princess' death, they would take the holier-than-thou approach and thus gamer those customers who felt outrage that a woman was hounded to death just to sell a few more magazines.

The fact remains though, no matter if the executive's decision was to make a buck or not, when they made their policy statement they put themselves in the position to judge what is fit for their customer's to read.

And that, my friends, is censorship.

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If you would like to drop the author a note about the article please email to deborah@ipa.net

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