Are you saying that when Baez referred to "curved spacetime" he was excluding black holes (because the paper was claiming that non--black-holes have Hawking radiation?) or are you saying something else?
So for example if you take a dead star in a vacuum with nothing else in the universe (and make certain technical assumptions) then you can prove that the star does not emit Hawking radiation. That's quite a strong result, and certainly does make the result seem shocking.