I swear, I’m having a very difficult time keeping up with the Outrageous Outrages lately. They’re gushing out so fast from the bottomless Well of Outrage that I’m worried the blowout preventer is going to fail, contaminating a huge area with long-lived Outragium and necessitating a massive government effort to clean up the sticky, smelly, coagulated balls of nothingness.

The latest OO to spill all over the wingnut blogosphere, talk radio, and inevitably Fox News is that President Obama has done something uniquely awful again: he’s visiting Chicago during Memorial Day instead of giving a speech at Arlington National Cemetery as every other President has done since time immemorial.

Oh, wait. What?

In 2002, President George W. Bush was in France on Memorial Day and participated in ceremonies at Normandy (site of the D-Day landings) honoring the U.S. soldiers who fought and died in World War II.

President George H.W. Bush (himself a World War II veteran) attended no ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery during his four years in office. From 1990 through 1992 he spent the Memorial Day weekend vacationing in Kennebunkport, Maine, while Vice-President Dan Quayle laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

President Ronald Reagan was away from Arlington on Memorial Day on four occasions during his eight years in office.

If giving a speech at Arlington on Memorial Day is a measure of patriotism, then the most patriotic president ever was Bill Clinton. He was at Arlington for every Memorial Day of his two presidential terms.

By the way, President Obama will be attending a Memorial Day ceremony at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood.