This can not be for real. It simply can’t. No one can be this amazingly clueless.

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…”

“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…’ ”

Let me get this straight.

Barack Obama just came back from giving a speech in front of 200,000 adoring Germans in front of a monument to Prussian militarism that was put where it is today by Adolph Hitler. Now this guy, an advertising guy who’s done work for some pretty major clients, wants Obama supporters to give each other a special salute when they meet and then stand in front of him at the convention and give him the same salute in unison?

Oh, that’s just a nifty idea. Maybe they could chant a catchy little phrase over and over while giving this salute, too; something like “Hail to Victory”? That sounds appropriately hopey and changeriffic.

I am expecting in a couple days to find out that this is all some huge hoax set up by some merry prankster hoping to get some viral web action to bolster a low spot in his business. I’m praying for that to be true because if it’s not, then we have bigger trouble on the left than I ever reckoned.

I know I’m playing this for a joke but when you think about it, there’s something very unfunny at the core of it. Stuff like demonstrates why we have yet to kill the fascist impulse. People don’t have to be dragged into it. When a leader with those tendencies gets ready to take over, he finds that the people will fairly beg him to take them there.

Michelle Malkin has some other ideas for inspirational Barack Obama images.

Dan Riehl has gotten himself all turned around and backwards and may be saluting the wrong thing.

UPDATE: I knew, in the back of my head, that I had seen the Hail Obama salute someplace before but, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember where. Ed Morrissey pulled the reference in his post.

It’s from a Star Trek episode. The reason I couldn’t come up with it right away is because it’s the episode most Trekkies know as “The Hippie Episode”, formally called “The Way to Eden”. Until today, I was pretty sure I had expunged every memory of that steaming pile of suck from my brain. As I remember it now, I’m fairly sure that was the episode where Leonard Nimoy committed the musical equivalent of a war crime when he sang along with the space hippies.

Also, as I recall, the space hippies did a lot of talking about “The One”.

Now I’m even more convinced that this really does need to be a prank. It’s now gotten way too good to be true.