Doug Brinkley Wasn't Trying to Bum Us Out. It Just Kinda Happened.

Native New Orleanian Douglas Brinkley was in Denver this morning, but brought Imus up to speed on the effort to plug the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and on just how devastating this nightmare has been—and will be—to life on the Gulf Coast.

It’s unclear yet whether the topkill method of injecting heavy mud and then cement into the well will stop the leak, but as Obama heads to the region today, Brinkley was hopeful he’d spend more than a few hours there, despite what his schedule says.

“I can’t imagine they don’t want to spend a little more time down there lingering, and meeting different people,” Brinkley said, and explained the schizophrenic mentality common among residents in the region, many of whom are his friends and family.

“On the one hand, they can’t stand BP, they just want to see them sued, go bankrupt,” said Brinkley. “But on the other hand, they want BP to fix that hole, because they’re the only ones with the technology or chance to plug it right now.”

Panic has begun to set in on the coast, where the sulfuric smell of oil has been making everybody from fishermen to oil industry workers sick. “There’s a whole way of life—the Cajun way of life—a life where petroleum and shrimp intertwine,” he said. “The President needs to spend time in those towns, talk to people, maybe visit the families of the 11 people killed in the Deepwater Horizon incident itself, and kind of get into the local scene a little bit.”

Only then, in Brinkley’s opinion, can Obama begin to understand why people are so worried their way of life is going to end. Going on scheduled, pre-planned tours of the area given by BP or the Coast Guard isn’t going to highlight the true effects, he added

“Spend a couple of days,” Brinkley encouraged the President. “People will feel that you’re caring more, that you’re not just flying in and out, that your heart and head is really in trying to solve how to contain some of these contaminants, how to help start doing the clean up in a more military-like maneuver.”

During yesterday’s press conference, Obama didn’t seem to know whether the head of the Mineral Management Services, which oversees (though not very well) offshore oil drilling in this country, had been fired or had quit.

Brinkley supposed he was trying to be polite, to which Imus said, “Part of the Earth is being destroyed—we shouldn’t worry about someone’s feelings.”

More than just destroying the Earth, this oil leak is decimating the local economy. “Louisiana is called the sportsman’s paradise on license plates,” Brinkley said wistfully. “It’s so thick with life from the sea that can be brought in. That’s gone now.”

If the well is not capped, which seems increasingly difficult, Brinkley predicted this will turn into more than just the largest environmental disaster in American history.

It will be, he said, “an almost unfathomable event.”

-Julie Kanfer