DaytonDailyNews.com

We just don't get no respect.

We pack the University of Dayton Arena in March for an NCAA tournament basketball game and some dot-com wiseguy describes us as a "dingy Ohio city."

Our baseball team, among the most successful in minor league history, has an on-field tussle in July and suddenly it's all over the national television networks, giving the impression that attending a ball game in Dayton is like being stuck in Baghdad.

And when we finally make a top 10 list in something, it's because we're characterized as a place that's just waiting for the rigor mortis to set in. Because according to an article on Forbes.com today, Aug. 5, Dayton is one of the 10 "fastest-dying cities in America."

How do you differentiate between a city that is dying and one that just has heartburn?

Forbes put us on the death watch list based on population, unemployment and economic statistics. The list also includes Cleveland, Canton and Youngstown, which would seem to indicate that Ohio also is one of the 10 fastest-dying states in America. I guess that's why those presidential candidates keep coming here. They want to get our votes while we're still breathing.

I'm also not sure how Forbes defined "Dayton." Is it the area within the city limits, or is it the entire metro area? If, as the magazine reports, the population of Dayton has dropped 12,600 since the turn of the century, is it possible that 12,598 of them now are living in Springboro? I'm not trying to do a Mark Twain number, here. But before we put Dayton on the do not resuscitate list, shouldn't we first check the pulse of the Dayton Art Institute, the Schuster Center, the Brown Street corridor, its restaurants, its hospitals and its outstanding columnists?

When the Forbes story was posted on DaytonDailyNews.com, readers quickly responded with helpful suggestions on how to keep Dayton's heart beating. Reduce crime. Reopen the Arcade. Get more jobs. Get rid of the mayor. Get rid of the mayor's eye glasses.

"Dayton needs to get a new mayor, one that is more professional," one wrote. "The one we have wears irregular glasses and spends too much focus on the hats that she wears and not enough on city planning." I'm not sure how much the shape of our mayor's glasses had to do with the latest local job cuts, although GM executives probably have made stranger decisions.

Others already have performed the autopsy.

"Dayton is not going to come back from the dead," another declared. "The Dayton natives continue to live in the past talking about the Wright Brothers and how great Dayton was back in the day, Daytons Dead."

If Dayton really is dead, it raises some questions for which I'm sure there is any precedent, because I can't think of any cities that have actually died. Not to be mercenary, for instance, but does Dayton have life insurance? And, if so, who gets it?

The bigger question, though, is what do you do with a city when dies? Does the corpse just lie there, moldering, waiting for the buzzards to come along? Or does it get a nice funeral? And where do you bury a dead city? And who should we get to deliver the eulogy?

I'd recommend Rodney Dangerfield.

Contact this writer at 225-2439 or at dlstewart@DaytonDaily News.com.