Simon & Schuster Once Axed a Book by Josh Hawley, but Here's Who It Will Publish

Simon & Schuster told us in 2021 that dropping Josh Hawley was about civic responsibility, not politics. A senator who objected to certification votes, they said, couldn't be published in good conscience. Fine. That's a stance a company is allowed to take. But stances have a way of revealing themselves over time, and this one has aged like milk left on the counter.

Because the question was never really "should a publisher have standards." Of course they can. The question is whether those standards apply evenly or whether "public responsibility" is just a nicer way of saying "we don't like this guy's politics." Hawley got cut for a floor objection. Meanwhile the same industry has published memoirs from far more compromised figures, people whose actions did a lot more damage than casting a procedural vote, without a hint of soul-searching about "amplifying dangerous voices." Funny how the principle only shows up when it's convenient.

Hawley didn't need Simon & Schuster in the end. Regnery picked up the book, it sold fine, and the senator is still in the Senate doing what senators do. The company lost nothing but its credibility on the point, which it apparently didn't value that highly to begin with. What this story really shows is how selectively "moral responsibility" gets applied in publishing, media, and plenty of other institutions that like to lecture the rest of the country about standards they don't hold themselves to.