I’m currently a little tired of overhearing aggressive Scotsman on TV. There is currently an angry Scotsman on commercials for Alexander Keith’s, Kellog’s Nutra-Grain Mini-Bites and Money Mart. What’s horrible about them all is that they all seem based on Mike Myers’ “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!” skit from his SNL days over ten years ago, and expanded upon in his 1993 film, So I Married an Ax Murderer. The angry Scottish father’s rant about his son’s big head is lifted almost verbatim in the Mini-Bites commercial.

These commercials alone tell me that people my age, who were in late teens and early 20s a decade ago are now working for advertisement agencies. The dynamic would appear to be:

“Hi, welcome to a position of power and influence. Let’s see what you’ve got”

“I’ll just check into my limited imagination and rip off something funny from my youth, which wasn’t so long ago. By the way, I’m still young, god forbid I get old and boring. Now, what do I have here? An obscure ethnic stereotype made popular by one of our country’s greatest comics ‘to have made it big in the States since he’d have no career in Canada’ yadda yadda, ‘considering we don’t pay our cultural workers, nor do we support them in any fundamental way through network broadcasting or other media promotion’ yadda yadda.”

“Oh, if it’s not Scottish it’s crap! That’s great! Sounds good! Everyone knows we’re a Scottish company!”

Now, Alex Keith was a Scotsman, and that’s the whole point of this commercial. But the other two?

Consider this a fuck you to said companies and advertising agencies. It’s not funny, it’s irksome, and it inspires my boycott instincts.