PHILADELPHIA — U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis, where Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest is enough of a legend to have streets and a park named after him, found himself coaxed out onto a shaky limb Wednesday, having boasted that he would ยgetย Vice President Al Gore to denounce the general, a statue of whom looms prominent in Memphis
The congressman, in the Republicansย 2000 convention city as part of a Democratic ยtruth team,ย talked with reporters at the media pavilion outside the convention center in the role of an ยAl Gore advocate.ย In the course of rebuffing the Republicansย efforts to identify themselves with the principle of diversity, Ford said that Bush was “pandering” to hard-core conservatives and cited Bush’s refusal to take a stand against the flying of the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina state capitol as an example.
On the theory that the sins of the goose are as culpable as those of the gander, a Tennessee reporter asked Ford point-blank whether Gore, as the Democratsย presidential standard-bearer, should denounce a three-foot bust of Forrest in the state Capitol building. Forrest is, in fact, the most memorialized state hero of any state in the Union, and Tennessee, by statute, recognizes Forrest’s birthday each year as an official holiday.