With Memorial Day fast approaching, conservative media types and right-wing bloggers are doing their best to attack President Obama's decision to commemorate the day at a military cemetery other than Arlington as disrespectful of the armed forces. This, of course, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that Ronald Reagan and both Bushes spent at least one Memorial Day away from Arlington, and they caught no flack for it.
But this situation is different, allege right-wingers like Erick Erickson and the bloggers of Wizbang. Sure, Reagan and the Bushes skipped out on Arlington, but they sent proxies, and their proxies were different from Obama's proxy because they had “undistinguished” military records and they never hated the military like Obama hates the military and so on and so on.
It's complicated, to be sure. So in order to help future presidents figure out what they're supposed to do on Memorial Day, we present the following visual guide to right-wing rules for presidential Memorial Day observance, which should hopefully clear up any confusion as to what's going on here: