Don't you dare complain that New Orleans got more attention ...

Leonard Pitts' column in today's Miami Herald is a poignant reminder that hyperbole will get you nowhere.

The columnist wants your response to something that's been circulating on the Internet. It was supposedly written by an emergency manager in Colorado, though different versions carry different points of origin.

The e-mail describes how the area has just recovered from a blizzard of "Biblical proportions" -- 44 inches of snow, winds up to 90 miles an hour, utility poles down, roads closed, communities cut off.

And yet, says the e-mail writer, "George Bush did not come. FEMA did nothing. No one blamed the government. ... Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit. ... Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards. No one asked for a FEMA trailer. No one looted. We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks."

What's your response? Your response is to smile. A tolerant smile. A Lord-give-me-strength smile. You point out patiently, calmly, that no snowstorm compares to Hurricane Katrina. "When the snow melted," you say, "your city was still there, so you're comparing apples to transmissions."

But it is hard to stay patient and calm. It just gets to you, how niggardly, stupid and flat-out cold some of your own countrymen can be. Why, you ask, do they play this game of Whose Disaster Was Bigger? "What's the f------ point of that? We have a disaster and we expect help. Are we arrogant, are we wrong for expecting it? Why are you pissed off with us? What did we do other than ask for what anybody else would quite naturally ask for and in all likelihood get quicker than we did?"

People were not this nasty toward Miami after Hurricane Andrew. So what is it about you?

"New Orleans," you say, "has always been known as the place where anybody can come. You're an accountant in real life and you want to be Marilyn Monroe? Do your thing. We ain't gon' say nothin'. But what did we do to you that would make you turn on us, that would make you say something like, 'We had 10 feet of snow, f--- 'em.' What were we, other than citizens in a position where something happened to us same way something could happen to you?"

How dare anyone compare a snowstorm to the complete devastation of an entire city, indeed an entire region, a way of life? I just hope the e-mail in question was not actually written seriously by anyone, let alone an emergency manager. Clearly, whoever wrote that screed hasn't seen New Orleans, walked in the rubble, stood mouth agape, wondering how rebuilding can ever occur.

No, whoever wrote that is ignorant and stupid and thoughtless. And whoever wrote it should be ashamed, as ashamed as I am of their callousness.