The Boston Globe’s Joanna Weiss writes that it’s “hard to blame” Spike Lee for floating the conspiracy theory that the New Orleans levees were intentionally dynamited in order to flood the 9th Ward:

Lee provides few chances for accused villains to defend themselves, even lamely. And he offers a few accusations that go mostly unchallenged, such as the idea that the government intentionally blew up levees. It would be nice, historically speaking, to close the door on this one; former Mayor Marc Morial does himself a disservice when he says there’s room for doubt. Still, it’s hard to blame Lee for including the conspiracy theory itself. If people are distrustful enough to believe it, that’s part of the record, too.

Like the NYT’s Stephen Holden, Weiss fails to mention that Spike Lee himself is one of the “people… distrustful enough to believe it.”

Reader Bill R. writes:

Just a technical point.
Water finds it’s level. You can’t flood one neighborhood to ‘save’ another. When the levees breached ALL the neighborhoods were doomed to flood. The Gulf of Mexico just won’t fit into the 9th Ward.

But judging by the reviews I’ve read, the nation’s film critics are too busy applauding Lee for his righteous anger at the Bush administration to be overly vexed by his inclusion of this baseless conspiracy theory.