Please don't take this the wrong way, but take what your saying and magnify it and you get all of Louisiana.
I am originally from the Lake Charles area. My whole life people who knew I was from Louisiana would ask me when they heard something about NOLA. It was always bad. Always.
Nobody outside of LA has any clue about the rest of the state. Maybe 25% have heard or Shreveport or Baton Rouge, but only because the drove along I20 or watched their team play LSU. So every time something bad makes national news out of NOLA, most seem to assume that goes for the whole state. So for you to try and say it's not fair because problems in the ninth ward shouldn't reflect badly on Lakeview or the Quarter is a little naive.
The rest of the country thinks that all of LA is either swamp or ghetto/gangbanger territory. Well, that and everybody outside NOLA is named Boudreaux or Thibodeaux and their kids take a pirouge (pronounced 'pee row' not 'pee rogee') to shcool.
It's kind of like how I don't know anything about Michigan except Detroit is crime ridden cess pitt and the University of Michigan is really good at football. Well...
Louisiana has a better national reputation than Alabama does though. I can get over the whole not getting credit for Mardi Gras thing. Mardi Gras is not really a matter of importance to people not from this region, so I shouldn't expect any different. The image that most people have of Alabama is of this monolithic Southern Baptist state, they think of Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door, and they think it's a bunch of backwoods hicks.
I'm familiar with Louisiana, because honestly, where I'm from, our culture is more akin to Louisiana then it is the state we're in. (Take a wild guess where I'm from). The problem is people like to stereotype large swaths of territory they're unfamiliar with, they accept is as gospel, and when anyone trys to contradict them, it's like their little world falls apart. I grew up with no misconceptions about New Orleans, then again, prior to Katrina, I could get from my house to downtown New Orleans in about 2 and a half hours.
Trust me, I'm fully aware of stereotyping. I always get approached with it when I go out of town on a business trip and start talking about Mardi Gras. These people are shocked to find out that not many people here fit their stereotype of what Alabama was supposed to be. And I've found it odd that it's perfectly o.k to stereotype Southerners, but apparently, no where else in the country really fits into a stereotypical behavior.