The Virtues of Whitebread

In Los Angeles, you can buy a hot dog wrapped in a tortilla and topped with kim chee. "It's about as perfect a metaphor for 21st century America as you can find," writes Rob Long. "It's also pretty tasty." But 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 Long calls it, "being Whitebread." To be Whitebread is to be un-ironically 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 and Son, lays out his argument for "being Whitebread by choice" in this tongue-in-cheek paean to the tried, true, and very un-hip ways of Whitebread America.