Now he has a salute? Talk about "audacity"

No, I'm not kidding. That is the "salute" that his supporters will be expected to present at the convention and at Invesco field. US News has the skinny on this salute:

George Bush had his three-fingered W salute that supporters flashed when greeting him at presidential campaign events in 2000. And now, if a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above. "Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama's nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country, a renewed hope, and acceptance of responsibility for our future," says Rick Husong, owner of The Loyalty Inc. Husong tells me that he got the idea after seeing the famous Obama-Progress poster by artist Shepherd Fairey. "We wanted to get involved some way," he says. So, the agency came up with their own a symbol of hope and progress that also plays off Obama's name. "We thought, 'Let's try and start a movement where even while walking down the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for Obama,' " says Husong. Much thought went into the relatively simple idea. "You interlace your hands in a circle, the interlacing being a symbol of different types of people coming together and the circle a symbol of unity," he says. Their design, unlike Fairey's, is free, and Husong is urging people to download it and print it on posters and T-shirts. "We want to see it everywhere, but more importantly we want this sign to take the world by storm."

Professor Reynolds points out that the 'Sphere has rallied around this, and are picking up on the various references around the 'Net that might have spawned this. They include a Star Trek reference, a Pink Floyd reference, from "The Wall," and a shock site reference. Wherever the artist got the idea it doesn't matter. This is stupid. Yeah, we know the president had his "salute" when he was running the first time, but in his reelection bid it was used far less. Maybe he figured out that the gimmick was old, or maybe someone told him to knock it off because the nutroots fever swamp believed he was saying he'd be around for three terms. We don't know, and we really don't care.

What we do care about are the lemmings at Invesco that will be making the "O" over their head as their "messiah" speaks. (No different, really, from the rally scene in "The Wall" where the supporters in the crowd cross their wrists above their head.) And remember that we have said in the past, based on the delivery of some of his rally speeches, that all they were missing was snappy uniforms and smart salutes. It now seems that he has his salute. Any word on those uniforms yet?

Publius II