Let James Cameron Help If You Really Care

James CameronIf you were running BP, and if you wanted a little positive press, would you be this stupid?

Probably not.

This, I do not understand at all:

Film director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron said on Wednesday that BP Plc turned down his offer to help combat the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing," Cameron said at the All Things Digital technology conference.

Cameron, the director of "Avatar" and "Titanic," has worked extensively with robot submarines and is considered an expert in undersea filming. He did not say explicitly who he meant when he referred to "those morons."

His comments came a day after he participated in a meeting at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington to "brainstorm" solutions to the oil spill.

Cameron said he has offered to help the government and BP in dealing with the spill. He said he was "graciously" turned away by the Britishenergy giant.

I would think that, if something has gone wrong at the bottom of the damned ocean, you would want someone with the expertise who can help. Lest you think the man is just a creator of fantasy, that's simply wrong. Cameron has a serious background in technology, innovation, science, ocean research, and can hold his own on any of these subjects. He is no empty suit, let's put it that way.

Cameron's biographer, Rebecca Keegan, had this to say about him:

MM [Mark Milian]: What do you think is the greatest discovery you made in the life of Cameron?

RK: The fact that he has this sort of equally developed two sides to his personality -- the scientist and the artist. ... [At Fullerton College] he was majoring in physics and at the point when he had to decide between the scientist and the artist. And he chose the artist. Usually people are a left brain or a right brain. ... He's as good a painter as he is a designer of cameras. ... He worked with NASA. He could hold his own in a room full of scientists. This is a guy with a couple of junior college physics classics. ... For him, science and art are equally necessary parts of what he does. In a town, Hollywood, where people get by being really good B.S.ers, he's actually incapable of it -- to a point of detriment, at times. ... He really tells you what he thinks to your face.

Perhaps this is why they turned him down--he has real expertise, and he won't sugar-coat anything. That's not the way BP and the U.S. government are operating right now. They are spinning this, and using bullshit as their weapon, and they can't afford to have someone with real-world expertise come in and reveal just what a mess this situation really is in all of that deep water.

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