Today the wingnuts are all over a National Enquirer story headlined “Obama Sex Perv Scandal.” Senator Obama is not the sex perv; the perv is a man named Frank Marshall Davis, a poet and activist who was a friend of Obama’s maternal grandfather and who was a “mentor” to Barack Obama before he went to college. Obama was 10 years old when he met Davis.

It turns out Davis is the probable author of a pornographic autobiography published in 1968. (And, of course, anything anyone writes in a pornographic book published under a pseudonym must be absolutely true.) According to the Enquirer article, the autobiography describes the seduction of a 13-year-old girl. From this tidbit, wingnut Erick Erickson concluded at RedState that

The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys.

An “underage, gay affair” usually is called molesting, but never mind. I read the Enquirer article (so you don’t have to), and it doesn’t say David admitted to sex with underage boys at all, never mind Obama. Perhaps there are details about boys in the print issue, but I suspect that if Marshall had written about boys, the Enquirer would have explicitly said so online.

Erickson continues,

This post is not intended to spread that rumor.

Of course not.

Frankly, if Obama wins, we’ll have our hands full around here making sure folks don’t develop Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Good luck with that.

Teh Nutroots at I Don’t Like You Either reprises The Best of Wingnut Hysteria on this issue. My personal favorite is from Riehl World View:

No wonder he says “Pakit-stan” in that funny way of his! heh!

You mean, like Pakistan is supposed to be pronounced? Wow, Obama must be, you know, a little queer. Real men mispronounce foreign words. Heh.

See also Thers at Whiskey Fire, the Poor Man, John Cole at Balloon Juice, Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings, and The Peking Duck.