The Times-Picayune in New Orleans gave it to The Washington Post today for what it contends is an unfair portrait of the city's post-Katrina situation:

We're almost five years removed from Hurricane Katrina, and some people are still struggling to accept this new crop of “professional New Orleanians,” those of us who advocate tirelessly for our city and who won't shut up because our story clashes with their narrative of the storm and our demands seemingly conflict with their ideas of American grit and self-reliance.

More than simply struggling to accept this new breed of New Orleanian as fully rational and fully justified in demanding recompense for this city's destruction, such critics have labeled us lemmings. Take note of The Washington Post's Hank Stuever who reviewed Spike Lee's documentary “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise.” Not content with judging the film on its artistic merits or lack thereof, Stuever also used the opportunity to review New Orleanians, as when he writes: “Lee remains transfixed by the Army Corps of Engineers' failures in the levee construction department, which brought on the flood. New Orleanians remain immobile on this point: Katrina did not cause the floods is a mantra, while New Orleans is below sea level seems an irrelevant bit of trivia.”

What's irrelevant, at least for the purposes of Stuever's insult, is the bit of trivia that reveals that 50 percent of the city is at or above sea level. Some neighborhoods are 10-12 feet higher than that.

“Innumerable media reports following Hurricane Katrina described the topography of New Orleans as unconditionally below sea level,” noted a 2007 report from Tulane and Xavier universities' Center for Bioenvironmental Research. “This oversimplification is inaccurate by half, and its frequent repetition does a great disservice to the city.”

But even if every inch of the city were below sea level, that wouldn't absolve the corps of the “failures” that Stuever correctly notes. The city's elevation didn't contribute to the flimsy construction of the levees or to their collapse.

Stating such facts seems to make some people uncomfortable. They want the story to be an indictment of our stupidity, want it to include warning signs that we ignored but they in their wisdom would have seen and heeded.