It’s surely not fashionable or politically correct to say so, but I’ve long admired the Grant Park statue of Christopher Columbus that protesters unsuccessfully tried to topple last week. The statue is just one example of how the controversial Italian explorer is as deeply embedded in American culture as such Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin. Columbus is to discovery what Franklin is to ingenuity.

Dealing with Columbus’ legacy, which reaches from the Chicago flag to the name of the nation’s capital district, will be no easy task. Richly detailed and handsomely proportioned, the bronze statue dates from 1933, when Chicago set aside the hardships of the Great Depression and threw a colorful bash at a world’s fair dubbed “A Century of Progress.”