ESPN Puts New Orleans Back Underwater

• Actually, I lived in New Orleans off and on for five years. It's a place I care about deeply. I'm well aware that there are bigger problems going on in the city -- I <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/columns/a-considerable-town/new-orleans-jazzfest-scenes-from-a-recovery/16511/" target="_blank">wrote about</a> them last year. That said, I'm not angry about this image so much as I find it deeply and darkly comical. Obviously the image is superimposed, but it's superimposed to look like friggin' Katrina floodwaters are still floating around outside the Superdome. Maybe you don't think that noteworthy, but I find it a pretty silly thing to do.

• The picture looks like a shot of the city across the river with the dome superimposed above it. My guess is that you have never been here, because this type of thing is not what you tend to get sensitive about when you've been through the type of hell that Katrina dealt. Just in case you believe that the four heads flying in the sky are really that big they are not.

• No, I don't think it's a parking lot. It looks like whoever created the image laid a shot of the Superdome on top of a shot of the Mississippi River. That bridge in the background is the Crescent City Connection, which links New Orleans with the west bank of the river. I'm sure whoever did it meant no offense and was probably charged with trying to insert as many New Orleans icons as possible into the same shot -- that's why they stuck that random, misplaced Bourbon Street sign in the corner -- but the Superdome isn't just a sports arena anymore, it's the quintessential icon of Katrina-related misery and putting a large body of water in front of it strikes me as a pretty boneheaded thing to do. I find it more comical than offensive that they did it though.

• Could this be a rain slicked parking lot? Also it looks like the opposite side of the arena was photographed for the publicity shoot than the night time shot you show (note the bridge with the light strings is in the foreground of the pubshot and in the background of your night time photo).

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