Veteran newsman Dan Rather is covering Sundance this year—his gray Midwestern eminence has been spotted, camera crew in tow, hovering around the press screening rooms and credentialing areas—and I know at least one pioneering movie blogger and longtime Sundance habitué who is pretty much gloating about it. “What’s he DOING here?” my friend asked me. And I surmised: “Looking for an easy, controllable and celebrity-driven story for that HD newscast he does on some cable system no one I know of has access to.” My friend found this pleasing. “Welcome to our world, Dan Rather,” I said, and my friend laughed and agreed.

Because Dan is Important. He grilled Nixon on live TV during Watergate. After 9/11, someone mailed him anthrax. He once had a sitting president—George Bush the First—insult him on his own newscast in front of millions of TV viewers. His mysterious mugging by cryptic New York thugs even gave the culture a non sequiter catchphrase: “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?,” which is all the men who clouted him ever said.

And sure, Dan’s been put out to pasture about as gracelessly as any broadcaster in TV history—lawsuits, Katie Couric, accusations of egoism, sexism and, worst of all, journalistic shoddiness. Some might think that trailing after Colin Farrell or whomever he’s here to chat with is a rather ignominious fate for a figure once mentioned in the same breath as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

But you know what I think? I think Dan’s got it right. Okay, sure, there are primaries going on in South Carolina and Nevada. Okay, the market has been veering up and down so much that any chart of stock values looks more like the EKG of a patient with a personality disorder than an economic reading. These are important news stories. But are they more important than the glitz and glamour of Sundance—or Hollywood Not-As-Far-West, as some people I know have called it?

Turn on your news channels, cable subscribers. What do you see? I see Nancy Grace personally solving murder cases like one of the detectives on CSI, or at least trying to give that impression. I see newscasters parsing comments tossed off to paparazzi by Britney Spears with more solemnity and intensity than the Counsel of Nicaea devoted to the Gospel statements of Jesus Christ. To vie for the hearts and minds of America’s voters, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don’t appear on 60 Minutes—it’s Tyra Banks’ attention they’re vying for.

And Dan’s a wily veteran. He’s got his ear to the ground. I know he’s here at Sundance because, in its intersection of celebrity glamour and indie cinemagic, this is where the real national action is. And like a good reporter, Brother Dan is just trying to get out in front of the story.

So,Dan, if you’re reading this, I’ll see you on Main Street just before the bars close. And the 3.2 beers are on me.