Fifteen Well-Earned Minutes

Lots of people earn the proverbial 15 minutes of fame for doing something stupid like getting their head caught in a fence or leading cops on a cross-country car chase culminating in being rescued from a river. Or they earn it for somebody else's stupidity, like that call-girl who was ex-New York Governor Spitzer's regular "date."

But occasionally somebody earns it for something positive, good, not embarrassing, maybe even heroic.

Like Chesley Sullenberg, the pilot who landed the US Airways flight safely on the Hudson River in New York, saving now only his life and the life of others on the plane with him, but also the lives of who knows how many people in Manhattan or the Bronx that his plane could have crashed on.

His hometown of Danville, California gave him a parade. Katie Couric is going to interview him. This guy, who said he and the rest of his crew was "just doing the jobs we were trained to do" (an understatement), has earned it.