In March 2006, three members of the Duke University lacrosse team were arrested and accused of kidnapping and raping an exotic dancer. The three — Reade Seligman, Collin Finerty, and David Evans — steadfastly maintained their innocence through a storm of public media scrutiny, university chastisement, and community isolation.

Yesterday, they were declared innocent of all charges, although the situation is far from over.

Last week, radio jock Don Imus used racially charged slurs to describe women on the Rutgers basketball team that played for the NCAA National Championship. He too experienced a storm of public media scrutiny. While Imus has issued an apology, this situation is far from over as well.

What has struck me most about these two situations is how the Duke men and the Rutgers women handled the eye of the storm. In both case, they remained calm, determined, and confident of their position. No doubt each man and woman has had personal moments of anguish, but they confronted their situations with enormous dignity.

After the verdict of innocent was read, the three Duke men each issued statements. I was impressed with how they put their experience into a universal context as they wondered aloud that if such injustice could be done to well-to-do families with the means to hire high priced lawyers what could happen to the less well off? And what’s happened to our legal system when “Presumed guilty” has replaced “Presumed innocent?”

The Rutgers women and their basketball coach, C. Vivian Stringer, were no less thoughtful. While various sponsors pulled advertisements from the Imus show and various black leaders called for the show’s cancellation, the team members remained focused on using their experience to raise the level of awareness not only of black women but also of women of every color. In the end, Imus got the axe.

In time, I hope these young people will not be defined only by these incidents, although I suspect each will be shaped by them. All I can say is that they behaved better than the elders around them who postured and posed and pressed. In contrast to yesterday’s blog, it’s refreshing to see students approximately two generations younger than I behaving with such maturity.

Anna Nicole Smith and Don Imus have both had their fifteen minutes of fame, maybe even more. They haven’t done much except lead trashy lives or believe than anyone else is fair game for insulting comments. Neither has made a break-through in medical science or in peace initiatives. Yet, their current woes have been headliners in the local and national news media for the past week.

I’m not sure why.

One could argue that the media promotes them. They ask who is Daniellyne’s father? Why did Imus make those racist remarks? On the other hand, one could argue that the general public’s fascination with vapid contemporary culture encourages the media’s effort to provide fodder to ramp up viewer statistics and woo advertisers. It’s the chicken or the egg, revisited.

I don’t watch much of it, except this morning I endured both Anna and Imus for the sake of seeing a short snip about my son’s company that was to have been on one of the morning shows. It never appeared. When I questioned my son’s media person, she said the clip was preempted for more important news.

Naturally, I’m biased for my son’s company; I would have loved to see it gain some national press. But even if this weren’t the case, I don’t see what important news occurred, given the content of the show that I watched for two hours. Instead I’m more convinced that we are becoming a nation of vapid voyeurs. It doesn’t really make me happy.