The Malibu, once reviled for its drug-infested squalor, was promoted online as a "stylish and comfortable" budget hotel on the "trendy Upper West Side."

It looks much like the "network appliance" that Mr. Gates once reviled when it was first proposed by his company's rivals, Sun Microsystems and the Oracle Corporation.

Once reviled by some as a visual scourge of the city, graffiti today - or at least the astonishing esthetic it invented - is everywhere.

Even French country wines, once reviled as inelegant, harsh and spicy, are being re-evaluated; these days the operative words are earthy, honest and racy.

Day care, once reviled, has become a necessity.

In the latest manifestation of openness, the Russians have finally come to Hollywood, a place once reviled in Moscow as a pernicious den of American cultural imperialism.

Once reviled, the two travellers are now miraculously rehabilitated in a whirl of commemorative events and souvenirs.

The change was particularly striking at The Los Angeles Times, once reviled as the nation's worst; a vote of Washington-based reporters in 1937 named it the nation's "least fair and reliable" publication.

It must be a bit delicious for Shaq to be craved by someone who once reviled him.

Now that Castro's ability to provide for his people is running dry, other artists lampoon the Government's moves to permit the very sort of capitalism it once reviled.