After the Levees was originally conceived as a place to discuss post-diluvian New Orleans for all the people who had no real contact with the city itself -- concerned Americans and internationals. There are plenty of local bloggers (many meeting this weekend at the Rising Tide conference) who cover the local issues that are life-and-death in New Orleans but require too much local knowledge for everyone else to grasp. So Bill Quigley's post yesterday is important because it informs everyone what the situation is in starkly throrough detail. But the folks at the Third Battle of New Orleans have addressed the other side -- what people think they do know but are false.

I humbly submit LIES AND MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT KATRINA THAT WE HAVE TO CONTINUE FIGHTING:

• New Orleans was the only victim of Katrina
• New Orleans is entirely under sea level
• New Orleanians were generally uninsured
• All of the victims of Katrina were poor African-Americans
• The entire African-American population of New Orleans consists of looters, drug dealers and murderers
• The Ninth Ward was "just a bunch of projects"
• The "government" blew up the levees, sacrificing poor African-American areas to save the French Quarter and affluent white areas
• Most victims aren't coming back or aren't making a serious effort to come back and rebuild their homes and lives
• Houston's escalating crime epidemic can be entirely blamed on Katrina victims
• All Katrina victims wasted their assistance money on strip clubs, tattoos and Saints tickets
• Katrina a) was the only hurricane that devistated Louisiana last year, OR b) somehow reemerged in the Gulf two weeks later and devistated Lake Charles and Cameron Parish
• The problem in New Orleans can be ENTIRELY be blamed on corrupt New Orleans politicians (the "Chris Matthews defense")
• New Orleanians and Louisianians in general never warned the rest of the country and the federal government about inadequate levees and coastal erosion

and, perhaps most importantly (as our president points out):

• NOBODY SAW THIS COMING, and
• EVERYTHING IS BETTER NOW

I had the dreaded two stopovers on my way to and from a conference this weekend, so there were more than a few conversations in airports about New Orleans. The level of misunderstanding from even the most apparently good-hearted people is a little depressing. So I'm going to start a Katrina Myths series that links to the best things I can find to set the story straight. I have a few issues with the things on this list (It was not Katrina that destroyed Nola), but the list is great. If you have a myth you want to debunk, send it to me at tpmboyd at yahoo.