As of this writing, Craig retains his seat in the Senate. And in April, when Don Imus slurred the Rutgers women's basketball team, the backlash quickly cost the broadcaster his CBS Radio and MSNBC shows. Yet by December, Imus was back on the air with new radio and television outlets, trading quips with presidential candidates and comparing Senator Hillary Clinton to Satan.

The moral to these stories might be that there is no indignity so great that it cannot be overcome with enough time, humility and private contemplation.

Or perhaps we're just so obsessed with chasing new dirt that we no longer possess attention spans long enough to remember the old outrages. "The villagers show up with the torches and the pitchforks, and if you keep them out of the house long enough, they'll eventually disperse," Lisanti of Defamer said. "If they don't get in, you live another day."