But look, I wanted to say, every ethnic stereotype is insulting -- otherwise, why bother? And there are even nastier ones out there. How about the Irish, or the poor Poles, to name but two groups bedeviled by unkind, unfair characterizations. Being thought of as a cunning, quite possibly murderous people with a robust skepticism where the rules are concerned isn't the biggest defamation imaginable. It can even come in handy once in a while, believe me.

They hear the insult, but not the envy.

The men on ''The Sopranos'' do what most men, in their hearts, wish they could do: spend time with one another out and about, idle and unrestrained by the civilizing presence of women in their workplace, free to drink, smoke, curse, eat thick sandwiches of meat and cheese and carry guns and fat rolls of large-denomination bills. They freely commit violence and fornicate, the very things men still do best but are most vigorously denied by contemporary codes of acceptable conduct. Superficially, the women on the show seem beleaguered, but they too yell and curse and rage and hit and smoke and eat lasagna and cannolis, even later at night than nutritionists advise. In fact, the strongest characters on the series are the women: the late Livia, Carmela, Meadow, Janice, even hapless, overeducated Dr. Melfi. The women are fierce in the face of fearsome men.

So, there's a lot to envy. At one extreme: Galileo, Michelangelo, Enrico Fermi, Giorgio Armani, Don DeLillo. At the other: Don Vito Corleone. To middle-class America, as it was to upper-class Victorian England, being Italian is the most fun you can have and still be white. We believe that if you had a choice, you'd be Italian, too. In fact, in her 1990 book, ''Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America,'' the sociologist Mary C. Waters described a survey in which she asked people of varied ancestries which ethnic group they'd belong to if they could choose. '' 'Italian' was the most common response,'' she reported. From the outside, we realize, it looks like fun. The passion. The laughter. The food. The relatives. The good hair. True, Tony Soprano's families (both of them) are deeply dysfunctional. But even that doesn't keep them apart: they've found the path we all seek, a way for family members to be alienated and estranged and bitterly at odds but still closely intertwined and unshakably connected. They still show up for dinner.

The Mafia stereotype sticks because Italians are good at turning all their impulses, good or evil, into highly organized, fiercely efficient enterprises. If you have any doubt, consider the Roman Empire, or the Roman Catholic Church or the Giuliani administration. The early gangsters took a motley collection of squalid vices and victimless crimes -- the desire, during Prohibition, for alcohol; gambling and the money-lending required to sustain it; prostitution -- and turned it into an empire. Did they not make a lot of a little? Do you think it was easy to organize all those restless criminal spirits into such a well-oiled, tightly functioning machine? It must have taken extraordinary determination and discipline to make it work as it did. I know what you're thinking: Don't do us any favors! But do you really believe you'd be better off if all that crime, all that outlaw energy, had remained unorganized? Would you be safer walking down the street, or in your bed at night?

The gangster's life gets all the movie and TV attention because it's the most narrative-friendly, charismatic version of our particular cultural capital. This is the homage the rest of America pays to Italian-American magnificence: You've made us mythic. Maybe somewhere there are still adults who identify with the cowboy heroes of yore, but for the most part the public gun duel in the dusty street has been replaced by two stealthy bullets in the back of the head. At last, America is ready to accept itself for what it has been from Day One: the Colombo organized crime family, named for the 15th-century gangster from Genoa who docked hereabouts and began the application of force that got this land good and organized.