JavaME is not passe. It is still the most widely adopted cross-platform on-deck mobile phone environment and is continuing to grow. Sun is also really pushing the upcoming JavaFX, which is the successor to JavaME. This is not old stuff.
No it's not old stuff, and my original post mentioned Java's strengths. My point, however, is more towards marketing. As far as I'm concerned Sun is interesting now due to their innovation in other areas--Solaris, ZFS, Niagra, and "green" datacenters. Java just isn't all that cool anymore.
I would argue though that Java is cool now because of the emerging mobile device software sector. Maybe its just me but I find this area very exciting and Sun is doing things right by pushing for a open, unified cross device platform. Proprietary closed platforms like the iPhone are evil. From a marketing perspective, this could be very important in the next 5 years as mobile phone software usage continues to grow.
