Commentary: Did AI really defend the KKK at the end of my column? Let's discuss

Journalism schools teach that writers should report the news, not be the news. But what happens when one of your articles goes viral -- not for its content but rather for how an AI doohickey swallowed up what you wrote and upchucked a controversial summation? On Feb. 25, the Times published my columna about the 100th anniversary of when Anaheim voters kicked four Ku Klux Klan members off the City Council. That many readers seethed at my assertion that the lack of attention paid to the anniversary was unsurprising to me since Anaheim is a place that loves to "celebrate the positive." More than a few insisted that the KKK in 1920s Orange County wasn't as bad as in the South, which was such an O.C. response that I didn't give it a second thought.