My latest local, altie Nashville Scene cartoon is about Nashville’s statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who fought defending Nashville from the Union Army, who was the founder of the Ku Kux Klan and the first “Grand Wizard of the KKK.” The hideous, privately owned, 25 foot tall, fiberglass statue is a local embarrassment as it can be clearly viewed from the freeway, surrounded by Confederate Battle Flags.

The statue is funny on a number of levels: the general has blue jewels for eyeballs; he has a golden pony without knees or eyeballs; and the image of Nathan Bedford Forrest looks nothing like what the general actually looked like. The statue’s sculptor was once the attorney for James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Local officials have been trying to find ways to get rid of the eyesore, or to cover it up. One solution was to have the state of Tennessee plant fast growing trees next to the freeway to block the view of the statue. The owner of the plot responded with a plan to raise the fiberglass statue onto stilts, so that it could still be seen above the trees.

Gotta love Nashville.