BELITTLING THE VALLEY - SIGN OF THE TIMES.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

It must be tough writing a local newspaper column when you're looking down your nose at the people you're supposed to be writing for, but my colleague over at the Times, Scott Harris, seems to have mastered the trick pretty well.

You didn't have to read between the lines of his column Thursday on Valley secession to feel the contempt and disdain Harris feels for the people of the Valley - or "Twentynine Malls," as he and his cronies at the Times call it.

The Times, of course, has always covered the Valley as if it were a foreign land whose people and customs were beneath them. Their "Valley" edition is stuffed with editors and writers who think they're foreign correspondents.

But Harris' bleating is typical of people and institutions across the city who would dismiss the idea of Valley secession without even trying to understand the frustration and strong feelings that drive it.

Out here in the Valley, the idea of downsizing for more local control over our lives is reduced to just a bunch of Valley girl, mall talk - pure "phony baloney," according to Harris.

"It's a gimmick, an exercise in political posturing," he writes. "Still, an informal Daily News phone-in poll showed (surprise, surprise) that secession was favored overwhelmingly."

Surprise, surprise, Scott. The only phony baloney is your perpetuating that tired, old myth that life's just one big mall in the Valley - that there is no intelligent life here, so how in the world can we ever trust "those people" to know what's good for them?

Trust them, Scott. They know what's good for them and their families better than you or I ever will.

They also know when they're being made the butt of a tired old joke.

Columnists have every right to take a shot at ideas and programs we don't agree with.

But when you start demeaning and making fun of people, looking down your nose at them, you do so at your own peril.

The Times has spent decades looking down its nose at the Valley, taking this place for granted until someone in the front office finally noticed that this little pit bull in its own back yard - the Daily News - was nipping hard at its heels.

Readers were doing more than just hanging out at the malls checking out the Valley girls and sales, Scott. They were checking both our papers out.

They could see the Times was busy looking at the world, while the Daily News was busy looking at them and their lives - looking at local news.

They were intelligent enough to decide which paper was more important to them. The one that paid attention to them.

To try and woo some of these people back, the Times has put on a costly, full-court press in the Valley over the past several years, hyping its new "local" news coverage. The problem is, it's written by and for people like you - who look down on the Valley and the hard-working people who live here.

Even in the place you call Twentynine Malls, the rubes are smart enough to figure that one out.

There's plenty of intelligent life and diversity in the Valley - from North Hollywood and Van Nuys to Woodland Hills and Calabasas, from Pacoima and Sylmar to Encino and Studio City. And in the suburban communities that have grown up around the Valley.

Plenty enough to go around for any city.

You wouldn't get the mayor of Los Angeles on the record saying "The Valley is driving L.A.'s economic recovery," if this place wasn't vital, not vacuous - if it wasn't much more than just home of the Valley girls, adult video shops and mallers you describe.

It's home to a vibrant, multicultural array of hard-working people, rich and poor, trying to keep the ever-elusive American Dream within their grasp.

People who think there may be a better way than this way. People who want to be heard.

And that's no phony baloney.