This was an excellent piece, and the Sopranos is, without a doubt, "a funeral service for our messed-up brand of masculinity."
The question this poses is: how do we maintain a masculinity that isn’t so messed up?
I doubt 2007 will be remembered as the end of universal gender traits that manifest themselves across societies and species...it might just be the end of an identification with violence, stoicism and sexism.
So the challenge to all modern men, but especially Jewish men (being handed an more complex gender role that the easy, Italian-tough-guy type), is to re-design an identity that is masculine but not sexist, childish or sex-destructive. Can we be a strong, assertive gender that still likes to eat pussy?
Modern feminism has been teaching women to cherish their femininity without sacrificing their agency (another HBO series, “Sex in the City,” worked on that); it's time we men catch up.
In the end, the Sopranos is as much a call to arms as it is a funeral.