Michele Bachmann-busted-for-driving-stoned satire prompts official denial

Earlier this week, we told you about satirical news stories on Colorado pot sales that some people appeared to be taking seriously, including one whose headline claimed that "Marijuana Overdoses Kill 37."

Have the citizens of Internet Nation learned anything from these experiences? Not all of them, apparently. Enough folks were persuaded by a gag story about Representative Michele Bachmann being arrested for driving stoned in Fort Collins that the city had to tweet out an official denial.

The website that published the piece is called Newslo, and it doesn't exactly hide its Onion-esque mission. If folks aren't hipped to the fictional nature of its reporting by its goofy logo....

...they should be made at least a little suspicious by salvos such as "Rep. Steve Stockman Endorsed by Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, and Lucky Charms Leprechaun" -- the item that popped up in the lower right-hand corner of my screen as I scrolled through "Rep. Bachmann Arrested for DUI in Colorado."

Here's a look at a screen capture from the latter:

Granted, the article is written in the sort of neutrally bland style of many mainstream news reports. But the only source mentioned is one "familiar with the situation," and the assertion that Bachmann was booked into the "Fort Collins jail" after running a red light and failing multiple sobriety tests is undercut by the fact that the City of Fort Collins doesn't have a jail; Larimer County handles incarceration there.

Nonetheless, the response to the piece was such that Fort Collins tweeted the following....

#fcpolice On the record, those internet rumors about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann being arrested for DUI in Fort Collins are NOT true.

— City of Fort Collins (@fortcollinsgov) January 8, 2014

...and the Fort Collins Coloradoan published an article debunking the claim that's funnier than the original, since it juxtaposes official comments from finger-wagging Bachmann mouthpiece Dan Kotman and spokespersons from the local police and sheriff departments with references to Newslo posts "claiming Syria will convert its chemical weapons into Axe body spray, and that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is auctioning off his kidney stones on eBay."

It's more evidence that people in Colorado aren't the only ones smoking something.

More from our Marijuana archive: "'Marijuana Overdoses Kill 37' story among Colorado pot satires some take seriously."