Miller Lite has decided that it needs protection from the ire of Italian-Americans. Chicago-based parent company MillerCoors is pulling a couple of TV ads after an Italian-American group complained that the ads made fun of their ethnicity and linked them to the Mafia. The ads spoofed a moblike figure offering “protection” to a clerk tending the beer aisles.

The ads touting Lite’s new “taste protector” cap “were intended to be a lighthearted satire using pop culture imagery,” said Pete Marino, a spokesman for MillerCoors. But the groups decided the company “knew too much.” Or something like that.

The commercials started in May and were slated to run through the summer, but MillerCoors said it’ll have the ads down within the week. (You might say the company has renounced them.) From an NBC Chicago story:

Italians are telling the Godfather of beers to fuhgeddabout ads poking fun at the mafia — or else.

A group of Italians angry at ads cracking on Sicily-style Sopranos lingo have convinced beer king MillerCoors to pull down the Miller Lite commercials, which aired on Chicago TV, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

In one ad, a character from “The Sopranos” enters a liquor store and asks the owner if he needs protection — and the owner points to a Miller Lite keg and says he’s got all the “protection” he needs. Another shows the same character, Vincent, threateningly asking a bartender if he’s a “wiseguy.”

The founder of the Italian American Human Relations Foundation of Chicago said, “we seem to be the last breed in America that ad agencies think they can take a shot at.” The foundation helped lead a campaign to get the Miller Lite ads off the air. The group threatened to convince Italian-Americans throughout the country to boycott all MillerCoors products. Other groups, including the Order of Sons of Italy in America, also chimed in. (You can watch the ads here and here.)

We’ll say this: As a fan of good advertising (who happens to be 1/4 Italian), we will miss the commercials. We thought they were clever and funny. In an ideal world, everybody could have laughed along with the joke. This is not an ideal world. So, badda bing, badda boom, the commercials now sleep with da fishes.