BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Hamilton County taxpayer sits numbly at his kitchen table, pondering the dawn and reading his Enquirer. He's not sure he can take it anymore.

The latest stadium story hits him like another body blow. By now, the stadium stories all kind of blend together in seamless, endless anarchy. To see the word ''stadium'' in a headline is a signal for him to start bobbing and weaving, lest he be caught off guard and smacked flush by some new city-county-Mike Brown nuttiness.

''Look at this, Ethel,'' he says, bobbing. ''Bob Bedinghaus says a redone Cinergy Field is a good solution to the Reds stadium problem.''

''What?''

''Bedinghaus says it will be cutting edge.''

''A cutting edge cookie cutter?''

''He says we could be like Anaheim.''

''Why would we want to be like that?''

''He says retro stadiums are passe.''

Ethel wants to know how something retro could also be passe. ''Never mind. Bedinghaus says rehabbing old stadiums is the wave of the future.''

''So. . . . soulless, concrete bunkers are good,'' Ethel says. ''You're beginning to see the light.''

Ethel sighs the sigh of someone who says she has heard it all now, but is pretty sure she hasn't. ''Sounds like an old stadium in a new box,'' she says.

What's old is old

So this is it. This is what we get for our $540 million: A palace for an underachieving football team and a makeover for the Reds. (Not to mention a central riverfront re-do we didn't even vote for.) Not only are we told a rehabbed Cinergy Field would be a fine place, but now we learn it would involve forward, state-of-the-art thinking as well.

How lucky we'd be to have a new stadium that's 30 years old.

To think it only took them two years to come up with the idea.

It'll be a regular Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal at Cinergy Yards. ''Our charge is to create a transformation that will make (the soulless, concrete Cinergy bunker) look like a new park,'' Bedinghaus said.

He's fairly sold on the notion. But the fact is, you can put lipstick on a chicken. But it's still a chicken.

What a disappointment. What a chance we had to turn the riverfront into something special. Take half a billion dollars. Combine it with the talents of planners, architects, builders and visionaries. Forge a future everyone could be proud of. It could have been, you know, cutting edge.

I don't know what it's going to be now, only that it won't be what was intended. It'll be half a loaf.

Cincinnati, settling. Again.

Is this what we want?

Here are three questions the county commission should ask itself, before proceeding with the lipsticking of Cinergy Field:

If I'm a fan, would I prefer a rehabbed old stadium over a brand new one?

If I voted for two new stadiums, should I feel good about one new stadium?

If I'm a taxpayer, am I happy with the way my $540 million is being spent?

And, a fourth: If I'm a commissioner who votes for this project, how much do I need my job?

I like Bedinghaus. Without him, we wouldn't be having this debate, because the Bengals would be somewhere else. I think it's good we have the Bengals, though you could argue the merits of that.

So give the commissioner his due. But this notion of rehabbing Cinergy is not cutting edge. It's like putting wings on a rock, and calling it a bird.

Maybe other cities with soulless, concrete bunkers of their own - Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis - will approve of large-scale stadium makeovers. But their citizens haven't passed a tax to pay for a new model.

One man's cutting edge is another's chicken in lipstick. It could all be semantics. But I don't think so.

Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.

Today's story: Reds go slowly on Cinergy remake
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