Endings: Rorty, The Sopranos, and Coke

My life got a little less full over the past few days: Rorty is dead; The Sopranos is over; and Coke was unanimously (!) reversed.

Rorty changed my life.  For a brief period, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity was my bible -- and helped me break old modalities of thought.  I'm less a pragmatist now than I once was (somehow I have embraced a relaxed moralism these days), but his example of clear writing and impatience with disciplinary conventions will always be a model to emulate.  He might have encouraged loose name-dropping, something I was certainly guilty of in college.  But I've got that under control now.

Like Mike O'Shea, I once stalked the man.  We had a brief encounter in his office in Stanford.  I had just started my Ph.D. and was visiting Palo Alto; I thought I'd chat him up and ask him if he would be willing to advise me.  I was writing an article about his work and was considering transfering to Stanford (for a girl, not for Rorty).  The meeting was very disappointing: he didn't look at me; only discouraged me; and generally seemed sort of complacent and boring.  This man who had changed my life through his writing had nothing like the voice I had come to admire on the page.  Of course, having heard him speak here and there, I knew he didn't sound like a maverick.  But it was still a meeting I will always remember; it was a deflating moment.

The Sopranos' ending didn't deflate me.  It provided drama even though nothing quite happened.  That was good.

The ending of the Coke drama was less disappointing than I expected.  I was invested in the Second Circuit opinion but felt that reversal was likely.  What I didn't anticipate was the blow-out; the case was a close call.  That Ms. Coke couldn't get a single vote at the high court was rather surprising: she got three Second Circuit judges (and six clerks) to agree that her claim was valid.  But what counter-balanced this disappointment for me was the willingness of the Court to explain itself and try to deal with serious counter-arguments.  I was close to losing faith with the rule of law when I read the oral argument transcript because it seemed that the Court might have ducked all the hard issues in the case and might have presented the result as a simple application of earlier case law, which this result assuredely is not.  I still ultimately disagree with the result -- but concede that the opinion is within the realm of the possible.  I'll do a more substantive post on Coke in due course.