It seems a bit strange to blame Zorn for spreading the myth that "programmers shouldn't manage memory" on the basis of that paper, when at about the same time he was writing a bunch of other papers extolling the virtues of customized memory allocators: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=172674, for instance.
Did you read the "CustoMalloc" paper? It's more of the same. Just to illustrate, the paper you referenced has the title "CustoMalloc: efficient synthesized memory allocator".
That is, "CustoMalloc" takes a look at memory usage patterns of a particular program, then generates a semi-customized allocator for that program.
Yes, of course I read it. Yes, the allocators are synthesized; so what? The point is that "synthesize a semi-customized allocator for each program" is a very different thing from "just use what the system provides you with; you won't be able to do better".
