“…a roiling, alligator-filled wall of flame.”

The Gulf is drowning in oil; a “titanic” solution is needed. Enter director James Cameron.

As the government scrambles to find any viable solution to the massive oil spill flooding the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, officials hope Cameron, director of big budget adventures such as “Avatar” and “Titanic,” can generate an answer.

Cameron joined a group of more than 20 scientists and engineers Tuesday who met to discuss solutions.

That’s an almost absurdly-easy target, and blog posts throughout the blogosphere have been busy taking shots at it for most of the day. But in fairness to Cameron, he’s not the only celebrity involved. Nor is he as unqualified as one might expect from a man famous for very little else besides making enormous amounts of money for Hollywood. Cameron’s well-documented tribulations making Titanic, The Abyss, and perhaps most relevantly, Ghosts of the Abyss — combined with one of the most exacting and obsessive personalities in the industry — have resulted in an expertise on deep-sea diving and remote-control aquatic devices that seems more than a bit legitimate, no matter how much I would like to post something snarky on his involvement.

Besides, the Kevin Costner/Waterworld jokes are even easier.