A pair of public figures who deserve praise:

Bob Costas was supposed to be filling in as host on Larry King's CNN show all this week. But last night, Costas "respectfully declined to participate," saying that the evening's tabloid topics -- another round of Natalee Holloway hype and more on the BTK killer -- were "not the kind of broadcast [he] should be doing." It's refreshing to see that someone in the world of TV news still understands that we should be paying attention to real news instead of these TV-movies in the making.

And hip-hop star Kanye West has called for an end to the homophobia that pervades the hip-hop community. On an MTV special that aired last night, West said, "Not just hip-hop, but America just discriminates. And I wanna just, to come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, `Yo, stop it." It'll be interesting to see whether his comments have any impact, either on the world of hip-hop, or on West's record sales.