As we reported, the New York Press today named ex-New York Mayor Ed Koch as its newest columnist with a gushing press release, courtesy of editor Adario Strange.

As Gawker points out, the Press wasn't so enamored with him earlier this year, when the paper named Koch the 18th 'Most Loathsome' New Yorker:

18. Ed Koch Democratic Ex-Mayor

"How'm I doin'?" To our amazement, pretty good, you batty old queen. Koch's rep as Mr. New York has managed to survive and even thrive in the 17 years since the publication of Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield's devastating City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. It's as if the names Meade Esposito, Stanley Friedman and Donald Manes have been scrubbed from history, allowing Koch to pose against an airbrushed legacy and somehow remain an active player even as he publicly descends into the middle stages of senility. The man who still insists on calling himself "Mr. Liberal" has supported local Republicans John Lindsay, Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Al D'Amato and Mike Bloomberg. When W. recognized him at a Wall St. event in 2003—"Ed!" Bush yelled, waving—Koch rushed over and declared his fealty to the Bush Doctrine on the spot. Soon, he was going public with this support on Hannity & Colmes. And so Koch was the perfect face for the city's "Make Nice" campaign in the run-up to the RNC this summer. Sadly, none of the prop elephants crushed the ex-mayor under a mountain of shit, thus terminating Mr. Liberal's heartbeat, to say nothing of his painful film reviews in The Villager.