“Whiskey-drinking” is the operative phrase, because Mad Men is sponsored by Jack Daniel’s Tenessee Whiskey (Brown-Foreman Corporation), and we’ll be seeing plenty of their product on the show, even though liquor ads are taboo in ’normal’ TV advertising. It’s a throw-back to when TV was full of what is now innocently called ad placement; back then it was just called “TV.” In the early 1950’s, no one blinked an eye with shows named The Bell Telephone Hour or Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, or when the name of a variety show was the Texaco Star Theater featuring a character (played by Ed Wynn) named The Fire Chief, which was not-so-coincidentally the name of Texaco’s top brand of gasoline.

Put it this way: if NBC announced that they had a new a spin-off of Scrubs called SC Johnson Brand’s Scrubbing Bubbles, and the main characters were The Janitor and Dr. Bob “Mildew” Kelso, and each episode involved one or the other obsessively cleaning Sacred Heart Hospital shower stalls, you might take notice. Maybe.

Charlie Collier, executive vice president and general manager of AMC, says of Mad Men, “This is a unique opportunity in a show about advertising to showcase advertisers and their commercials.”

According to The New York Times, characters in Mad Men “...will drink Jack Daniel’s in various scenes or ask for the brand by name. Sets will be decorated with vintage bottles, decanters and ads. Executives associated with advertising and public relations campaigns for Jack Daniel’s will be among the industry figures interviewed for short segments about “ad legends” past and present.”

Call it recursive advertising; a cynical TV show celebrating the manipulatve early days of advertising, used as an even-more-cynical Trojan Horse to sell ad space for modern advertising. Shouldn’t this cause a feedback loop or a black hole or something? Or at least a few gray-flannel suits passed out with whiskey on their breath?