Paul Conrad was a liberal mouth piece who played fast and loose with the facts while trumpeting his open disdain for conservative causes. No city should be the platform for the irreverent and unrepentant pundit. Nevertheless, Santa Monica provided a plot of land for Conrad's "Chain Reaction", a bunch of chains piled up to look like a mushroom cloud.
According to Santa Monica city leaders, the sculpture needs repair and refurbishment, at a time when municipalities are cutting core services while attempting to finance exorbitant public sector benefits.
I think it reflects poorly on the City of Santa Monica to showcase so political a figure, even if his creation was supposedly "not confrontational". The issue of nuclear non-proliferation is hardly a "timeless" issue, as alleged by next of kin David Conrad. Nor is Paul Conrad's extant artwork "the most iconic public art piece in the country." Has activist Jerry Rubin overlooked the Statue of Liberty, the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, or even the White House? These iconic structures hold higher esteem and carry far greater meaning and import than an anti-nuclear piece rapidly disintegrated into decay. The fulsome praise which pacifists have heaped upon Conrad's heap of rusty chains all the more highlights the growing irrelevance of the political cartoonist's attempt at posterity.
The City of Santa Monica would better serve the needs of the city by investing the money in proper infrastructure renovation, not trying to fix up a cartoonist's sop to his questionable legacy.