The Virtues of Whitebread

As wonderful as today's multicultural American kaleidoscope is -- and it is wonderful -- there's something to be said for America's waning WASP culture or as Rob Long calls it, being ''whitebread.'' To be whitebread is to be unironically normcore: to assume a formality of dress and manners, to embrace awkward silences, and to carry seemingly obsolete traditions from generation to generation. Long, the Emmy-nominated executive producer of Cheers and creator of Sullivan & Son, lays out his argument for being ''whitebread by choice'' in this tongue-in-cheek paean to the tried, true, and very unhip ways of whitebread America.