I only recently began reading your work, since I saw you on C-SPAN’s BookTV a few weeks ago.

I will confess that I own a Dunder Mifflin bag AND hat! I would argue that, for anyone using these items, this is pure kitsch.

My politics are extremely anti-corporate; I don’t display any real-world corporate logos. (Um, well, except for those from sports teams. I see a legitimate exception there, though I would bet that others of my political stripe would not. Hmm; perhaps an interesting idea for a column, no?)

The beauty of imaginary brands, such as Dunder Mifflin and the one you profiled from the movie Idiocracy, is that they allow for the subversion of the “language” of adverstising, and for the co-optation of this language for the purpose of making an ironic statement. (Co-opting the co-opters!)

And this is certainly true for the Dunder Mifflin logo. Indeed, all of the responses on the Brand Autopsy board come from the ironic, in-on-the-joke perspective, fully going along with the gag.

Carrying around this bag (especially to work!) is also an homage to the writing on the show, to the fact that this show has it right: we all essentially work at “Dunder Mifflin” — at a thankless job, under an incompetent boss, surrounded by annoying, borderline-horrible people.

Now, could someone possibly misunderstand the meaning of my display of this logo? Could someone miss the gag? I would imagine so — it is not pleasant to think that there are people so square that they wouldn’t get the joke; but it is realistic to think that.

In the aftermath of the New Yorker Obama cover, it is interesting to consider the frustration inherent in trying to do satire in a society that is losing the ability to discern it, or even to understand it.