The Sign of Hope and Responsibility

It's only been just over a month since Barack Obama had to junk his near-presidential campaign seal, so I'm a little surprised to see the latest iterations of Obama iconography:

The blogosphere's already erupting over Obama's "One Nation, Under a New Obama 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.

Notice the loftiness: people holding their hands up in a salute to "renewed hope" and "acceptance of responsibilty for our future."

I've been critical of all the attacks on Obama as fascist, but his supporters just get too creepy sometimes with all of this messianic propaganda.

Image Credit: U.S. News