Well it wasn’t the absurdity of the idea that immediately tagged the Manhattan Airport Foundation as a fictitious group. There have been a raft of idiotic suggestions on how to use Central Park since its inception. These included a race track, artillery range, public housing, large scale amusement park and, my personal favorite, a wild game preserve. What marked this as a well designed hoax was the fact that the website – manhattanairport.org – stated that they already had significant funding. That would be like raising funds for converting City Hall into KMart. Only a complete boob, or apparently the Huffington Post, would believe that such a farcicial idea was gaining international financial support.  That and the fact that the website listed the company headquarters on the 58th floor of a 57 story building (the Woolworth Building).  Oh, and maybe the 10 or 20 thousand security issues raised by having giant airplanes buzzing by the Empire State Building.  Did anyone say 9/11?

Anyway – no one has taken responsibilty for the hoax yet – the domain name is even registered to an annonymous shell company.  But they do have a growing band of happy followers on Facebook – divided between the amused and the deluded.  Cant wait to see where this takes off from here.