'Fox and Friends' falls for ruse alleging purchase of $1 billion of jetpacks for LAPD, Fire Department
October 5, 2010 | 5:10 pm
Anchors at the Fox News national morning news show "Fox and Friends" reported Tuesday that the city of Los Angeles had ordered 10,000 jetpacks for its police and fire departments. The price tag: a whopping $100,000 per unit.
For those doing the math at home, the cash-strapped city of Los Angeles, which is regularly sending its police detectives home because it can't pay all their overtime, allegedly shelled out a billion dollars on space-age transportation that it has never used in an emergency situation, much less tested.
"We certainly haven't bought any jetpacks," said LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. "We haven't bought [squad] cars for two years."
As Gawker.com was the first to note, the "Fox and Friends" report appeared to contain material taken right out of a story from the Weekly World News tabloid, which bills itself as "The World's Only Reliable New Source."
Hilarious! Last week we learned of James O’Keefe’s failed attempt to punk CNN, meanwhile it appears Fox News snapped up this bogus tabloid story. What next: Bat Boy for president?
CNN wasted no time poking fun at its rival:
A favorite meme among liberal bloggers is that we were all promised jet packs back in the day of bold futuristic fantasizing. Thus the schadenfreude is especially delicious this morning.
