Adding to the “don’t blame Arizona” frenzy is a retired New York City police officer, Kevin Gray, who writes how wonderful it is to see a newspaper support police.  He writes: “If your editorial is indicative of the overall support found in Arizona for law enforcement, could you accept the immediate lateral transfer of 40,000 overworked and underpaid members of the NYPD?”  We are awaiting an answer.

The Gotbaums have retained an attorney, Michael Manning, to speak for the family while they show their respect for Carol Ann Gotbaum during the traditional period of mourning.  For now, they remain silent.  But while the spin machine works overtime to smear her and thereby show that regardless of what failings happened in the Phoenix airport, it doesn’t matter because she was a dirty, filthy, vomiting, alcoholic, New Yorker (and we all know the evils associated with being a New Yorker).

Manning has sought to slow down the official whitewash, trying to stay a step ahead of the facts by promoting how concerned and well-intended these fine Arizona officials were in their efforts to stop this woman.  The Republic editorial throws in a few claims that have somehow failed to make the rounds anywhere else:  It describes Carol Ann Gotbaum as one of those “out-of-control airline passengers who scream and rent asunder their own clothes as they demand entry to a departing aircraft.”

So the Phoenix cops were compelled to physically seize her to prevent her from “renting asunder her own clothes?”  This was a clothing intervention?  That’s novel.

Michael Manning suffers the slings and arrows of the Republic’s ire as well, smeared for his anticipated expectation of a civil law suit where he will enjoy a huge payday.  While outrageous fortune has yet to happen, Manning “quite simply needs to learn the meaning of shame.”  I bet he can handle this rebuke.

So the Republic editorial, feeling the heat from the New York media, goes on the offensive:

For the New York media, of course, fixing Phoenix cops as villains is an easy day’s work. A New York Daily News columnist actually reported New York cops would have handled the incident far more professionally. With all due respect to New York’s finest, Abner Louima, a Brooklyn resident whose close encounter in 1997 with an NYPD broomstick made a few headlines, might beg to differ.

Well, that solves the problem.  As the Arizona Republic plays the “Abner Louima” card, the death of Carol Ann Gotbaum is given its proper place in the pantheon of police evils.  All is well in Arizona, and Carol Ann Gotbaum is, inexplicably, still dead.