the odd thing is that, in a bass-ackwards way, there is a certain ideal evident in 'the Sopranos' that DOES counter all of the valid criticisms (analysis?) Selsberg levels at Tony &co.  These mobsters live in the world, the real world, however much insular middle-class complacency would have it be otherwise. 

Politics (esp. in McGreevey-strip club New Jersey) really IS a sleazy, corrupt, misogynistic culture with no higher morality than naked power plays. Real life, jobs, big institutions, the law itself, are all really only as pure as their bottom lines-- which more often than not are backed up by arbitrary force and with rich assholes getting away with murder.

  Shakespeare would not have felt out of place watching the Sopranos, nor would Dante or even Aeschylus.  Same as it ever was.  We like to think we are more civilized than we were in shakespeare's verona or the Rome also portrayed on HBO.  But we're not.  The world still is run by people with money and muscle, who might lose a big war now and then but always win the day-to-day.  And those who free themselves of the fetters of conventional morality and guilt can indeed exploit and control this world, and literally and figuratively, get away with murder.  We all secretly wish we could do what Tony did, do whatever we want from moment to moment, use the aphrodisiac of power to sleep with whomever we want, keep a loyal wife and family at home too, and enjoy that moment of communion with similarly 'liberated' souls.  Royalty in any dress, even that of a mob boss, is still royalty, and there is a reason why nobility is nobility from David and Batsheva to Atilla the Hun to 'droit de seigneur' to Charlie Sheen/Heidi Fleiss and Tony Soprano.  

there are other ideals; but there is a hypnotic fascination to this one, and that's why we couldn't stop watching.