Frank Rich: Obama's Original Sin

After 9/11, Rudi Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again, but Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. So, as we stumble through the second year of the official "recovery", its time return to high-end carousing. A case in point was the late-May celebration of the centennial re-dedication of the New York Public Library. Surely, no civic institution could be a better occasion for a blowout. However, it was impossible to banish memories of the financial meltdown: Some two weeks earlier, the mayor had restricted the free and open access he now extolled. His fiscal 2012 budget called for slashing $40 million from the library system, a cut that would have mandated four day weeks and the shutdown of a dozen branches. There was also the awkward matter of the gala's "corporate chair", Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. In the pageantry preceding Bloomberg's remarks, the slightly flushed Moynihan, looking like a nervous ring bearer in a stately wedding ceremony was among those singled out by the announcer while marching down the reading room's long center aisle in a processional of library trustees, but it was impossible to banish toxic trace memories of the meltdown.