Loser? Boozer? What’s the Difference?

When it
was first reported last Monday that EMT Erick Gonzalez had been shot and killed
during a brawl at a Queens after-hours bar, the Post described his assailant
as a "hot-tempered boozer."

But times
change, and so does the Post. The next day, after hot-tempered boozer
Anthony O’Connor was arrested, reporters had a chance to talk to the man’s
friends and family. Suddenly O’Connor was no longer the boozer and hot-head
we’d come to know and love. Now he was "unemployed," "troubled"
and, as the Post’s headline described him, a "Lost Soul."

Page Two
commends the Post for such deft maneuvering in the interest of avoiding
a libel suit.