Let's apply a background color of black around the W3Nation graphic and a background color of Blue around the other cell. Sure, it's still pretty ugly, but it's a start. The Text in the nested table could be changed to white, the other table cell background could be changed to black, the background of the page could be changed to black. Now we have a page layout that is workable. It's not the best in the world, but usually the first draft of any layout is rough.
Most complex layouts involve complex tables.
The W3Nation layout uses tables exclusively as part of its layout. The headline graphic is in its own table. Then the big table begins. The sidebar table uses some heavy rowspanning and has plenty of nested tables within. The 'Departments' box, the 'Related' box, the 'Search' box, the 'Newsletter' box are all in their own tables, and they are all contained within a huge nested table in the sidebar.