fwiw, here's the voice of considerable experience (and the author of several highly regarded books on homebrewing, including this one...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brew-Your-British-...e/dp/1852491388 ).
I've done it many times; I don't think it really hurts the beer. I used to put the hot wort into a clean and disinfected brewing bucket, fit the lid and either cover the airlock hole with a bit of sticking plaster or fit an airlock. The airlock must be one that works in both directions though, because air is drawn in as the wort cools - some airlocks don't work backwards. I used to use those glass dual-bubbler things, but they don't seem to be available these days. There are some horrible-looking plastic things which should do the same job.
It is no different to what old-style commercial breweries used to do, with their coolships in the attic and external 'refrigerators'. Until the last few years, Excise regulations meant that the cooled wort could be hanging around in an open fermentor for twelve hours waiting for the Excise man to turn up before the yeast could be pitched.
(iirc the Hook Norton Brewery still use coolships to coole their wort to pitching temperature, an example of which is in a the picture I posted above, I presume they are no longer lead lined
).