From Entertainment Producer Matt Carey in Park City, Utah:

The Sundance Film Festival is generally about art and commerce, but politics wasn’t far away Monday night.

Mike Gravel, the former Alaska senator who’s running a quixotic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, turned up at the Sundance Film Festival that evening. While the leading Democratic Presidential candidates were debating in South Carolina, Gravel was sitting on a panel sponsored by the Creative Coalition.

We talked afterwards, and true to form, he was very outspoken.

He slammed Sen. Barack Obama, saying he was “inconsistent” on the issues and that his “lack of experience shows.” He added, “I don’t think in many respects he knows what he’s saying or the ramifications of what he’s saying.”

Ouch! I guess he won’t be on the short list of vice-presidential nominees if Obama gets the nomination.

But Gravel didn’t stop there. He also slammed CNN for keeping him out of the South Carolina debate, calling it a “conspiracy between the network” and the Democratic National Committee. And he said he was bored during the debates, even the ones in which he participated.

Perhaps most surprisingly, he said it won’t make any difference who is elected President. He suggested it’s going to be the “same old-same old” either way.