Because The Most Significant Geopolitical Event Of The Last 60 Years Is Really No Different Than Bubby’s Funeral . . .

The mayor’s we’re-New-Yorkers-so-get-over-it applied to 9/11 grief:

When he took over as mayor in 2002, Mr. Bloomberg threw himself into fixing the many pressing problems wrought by the terror attack: shoring up the security of a city suddenly at the center of a bull’s-eye; closing the gaping hole in the midst of Lower Manhattan; bolstering a sinking economy suffering the loss of thousands of jobs.

But the mayor has also played an essential if more subtle role in nudging the city to gradually let go of its grief. It is a challenge the mayor has handled sometimes clumsily and sometimes with great sensitivity and eloquence, as he charted the path away from the concrete events of 2001. Now, as he works to imbue the city with optimism for the future, he even hints at a day when remembering may not mean reading the names of all the dead.

“You’re going to have to change to keep it relevant,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference yesterday when asked about the fact that one television network had originally planned not to broadcast the entire ceremony, which exceeds four hours. “I’ve never been a believer that doing the same thing every time is the best way to accomplish anything.”

Indeed, Mr. Bloomberg, who spurns dwelling on the past and prefers to keep his emotions to himself, has been pushing the city from the start to move beyond its tragedy. Early on, he championed building schools and housing at ground zero and suggested that the soaring memorial envisioned by his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, would turn it into “a cemetery” and drive residents and businesses away.

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Mr. Bloomberg, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told The New York Times just before the first anniversary of the attack: “I think the Jews do it right. They have a headstone unveiling a year after the funeral, and that’s sort of the time that you sort of stop the mourning process and start going forward. And the 9/11 ceremonies, what I’m trying to do is that in the morning we will look back, remember who they were and why they died. And in the evening come out of it looking forward and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to go forward.'”