Thank God for people -- for journalists -- like Michelangelo Signorile.

It’s a shame, I think, that after God created Signorile he broke the mold, or the cast, or whatever He was working with at the time. We as a nation would be better served if there were more Signoriles toiling in what passes for the “mainstream media.”

In the latest issue of the New York Press, Signorile, with ample justification, rakes gay conservatives Matt Drudge and Andrew Sullivan over the coals for their happy and greedy alignment and affiliation with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s sinkhole of lunacy, better known -- though thankfully barely known, at least outside the offices of the Republican National Committee, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute -- as the Washington Times. (“The Washington (End Of) Times: Drudge and Sullivan give genocidal Moonie a pass,” New York Press, January 13.)

Signorile writes:

Can you imagine the owners of the New York Times -- or the Los Angeles Times or Cleveland’s Plain-Dealer -- pining out loud for the mass extinction of an entire group of people? Let’s say they envisioned the incineration of all gays, claiming it was God’s plan and had their words posted on the web.

At the very least, sensation-stalker Matt Drudge would link to the comments immediately, rightly whipping it into a major story. His zeal for fomenting scandals involving liberals would certainly overpower his obsessive fear that people might think he’s gay just for defending gays. (As if the rest of the world still doesn’t know he’s gay, even after David Brock’s “[expletive deleted] buddies” revelations and Jeanette Walls’[s] interviews with his former boyfriends.) Drudge’s openly gay compatriot, Andrew Sullivan, would no doubt take up the cause as well, attacking those nasty homophobe publishers on the left, railing on his web site about what hypocrites liberals are.

But if the paper in question is an influential conservative daily -- one that pumps up both of these right-wing gasbags regularly, and one that publishes Sullivan’s work -- then the rantings and ravings of its demagogic owner don’t seem to matter.

Sounds like Signorile has the same questions for Sullivan that I have expressed at Rittenhouse. How it is that Sullivan can enter a gay bar without having the crap beaten out of him is beyond my comprehension.

More temperately, as befits his persona, Signorile continues:

It’s sleazy enough that a conservative would work for Moon and ignore his dark and dangerous agenda. But how on earth could a gay writer take a check from a man who can’t wait to see him thrown into an oven? Andrew Sullivan has reveled in his own idiotic claim that after 9/11 certain liberals, because they didn’t agree with [President] George W. Bush’s policies, represented a “fifth column” supporting Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, here he is, on the payroll of a guy who would like to see the mass extinction of his own people. Sullivan likes to think of himself as a gay rights activist -- that’s actually how New York magazine described him recently -- but he only seems to activate when the targets are liberals. [Former President] Bill Clinton gets the Sullivan hatchet treatment for signing the Defense of Marriage Act, while the grossly homophobic Unification Church’s leader gets a weekly column from him in return for a few bucks to keep Sullivan’s increasingly lackluster and predictable web page afloat.

Ouch. I’m glad Signorile likes me. Or at least I think he does.

Oh, and by the way, Signorile deserves a medal for having the guts (Can you believe it takes guts these days to state the obvious?) to have included in his column these four words: “the lazy Judy Woodruff.”

Sir, you are too kind.