The following comment was recently submitted for Grapevine: "What a travesty that President Obama, who is the commander-in-chief, is going to skip going to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. I mean, what an outrage. What a slap in the face to everyone who has served in our military that he would rather go to Chicago for the weekend than go to Arlington National Cemetery. Every president has gone to Arlington National Cemetery and for this president not to do it is just a travesty, just an outrage."
This kind of statement that is designed to evoke the same emotion in readers --self-righteous indignation. And if every word in that commentary was true, it might deserve at least a little bit of outrage. But skeptic that I am, I had to find out how much of it, if any, was true.
Here's what I found out.
It's true that President Obama is planning to spend the holiday weekend in Chicago, where he is scheduled to honor America's fallen heroes with a speech at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery near Chicago.
Vice President Joe Biden will take his traditional place at Arlington.
However, he is far from the first president to be absent from the Arlington ceremony.
President Ronald Reagan skipped Arlington on Memorial Day on four of his eight years in office, sending various substitutes in his place.
President H.W. Bush, who was a World War II veteran, did not attend the Arlington Cemetery ceremony at all while he was president; he spent three of them vacationing in Kennebunkport, Maine, while Vice President Dan Quayle laid the wreath.
And President George W. Bush was out of the country on Memorial Day 2002.
Given this information, it is clear President Obama not only is not the first to break with tradition, but is, in fact, following in the footsteps of some of his more recent Republican predecessors.
President Clinton, a Democrat, is the only president in three decades who never missed a Memorial Day wreath-laying at Arlington.
Save your outrage for something else President Obama has done (or failed to do) -- or bestow it equally on all the presidents who broke with this time-honored tradition, including Reagan, Bush and Bush.