OK, I can kind of understand the general thrust of Canadian Club’s new ad campaign, with the tagline “Damn right your Dad drank it.”

I imagine that if you are in the business of trying to sell rye whiskey (No, not scotch, the other whiskey. No, that’s bourbon, we mean the other other whiskey.) you hear a lot in focus groups about how it’s an old fogey drink. And so one sympathizes with the effort to turn a positive into a negative — trying to cash in the general “mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again” nostalgia sometimes experienced by dudes entering what another beverage marketing firm would like us all to refer to as our “Carlsberg Years.”

I mean, didn’t our forefathers know how to use tools and fire guns and fistfight bears and all that other badass shit? That’s cool, right? And hell, the kind of guy likely to go in for the wood-panelled rec room vibe in the photos might find himself — fresh home from having his chest waxed and in the midst of plucking stray eyebrow hairs — looking in the mirror and sympathizing with the whole “Dad was not a meterosexual” message. I see the thinking. (You know I’m not immune to that crap.)

But how to understand the fact that not one but two of these ads evoke the image of “your dad” getting laid?

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