That was quick. Obviously, someone has seen the irony of President Bush’s pose and played around with the image. The coverage is obviously from the media shots of his commencement address to the graduates at Calvin College, during which he struck what his advisors no doubt are thinking is an unfortunate pose . . . Bush Issues Call to Service at Michigan College.

The image above is a photoshop of his speech with obvious editorial comment upon what some believe the administration’s religious right politics means for the nation. The reference to the One Ring is a callback to an earlier political editorial photoshop implying a parallel between Bush’s seemingly unquestioned powerbase and the ring of Sauron. See that here. The earlier piece is obviously more subtle and more elegant. Both are political parody. I think the earlier one was the more clever but the current one was just rather fast (albeit, obvious).

The President’s visit to the college was not without incident as over eight-hundred faculty members, alumni, students and friends of the school signed a full page advertisement in the local newspapers criticising his policies and his visit to the school:

"In our view, the policies and actions of your administration, both domestically and internationally over the past four years, violate many deeply held principles of Calvin College."

Another ad critical of Bush and his vist appeared in Sunday’s paper as well.

While Bush’s speech called for young people to take up service in Christian organizations, government, and the like . . . his critics likewise noted that their own objections to his administration’s policies come from Christian values:

Many of those objecting to Bush’s visit said his administration has violated the religious principles espoused by the school, which is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church in North America. They argued that the war in Iraq, Bush’s environmental policies and what they described as choosing tax cuts for the wealthy over programs for the poor all deviate from what they see as a righteous vision. "It was our attempt to make clear that our Christian convictions lead us in different ways on policy matters than the president’s Christian convictions have led him," George N. Monsma Jr., an economics professor who signed one of the ads, said before the graduation ceremony. "We plan to be gracious hosts, but this is part of a long Calvinist tradition of speaking truth to power."

Makes sense to me.