Loser? Boozer? What's the Difference?

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.