RHETORIC OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

ACCORDING to their critics, San Fernando Valley secessionists are both dangerous zealots bent on mayhem and destruction as well as small-town simpletons - some odd combination of al-Qaida and the Cleavers.

The rhetorical excesses on both sides of the independence debate make for some bizarre metaphors.

Take Bob Scott, the West Hills attorney whom Mayor James Hahn sacked from his post on the Los Angeles Planning Commission, allegedly for his pro-cityhood views. ``To me, it's obvious that the people friendly to the cause of anti-secession are getting these posts,'' he complained. Then, in the mother of all overstatements, Scott likened Hahn and company to the butchers of Beijing. ``It's just like Tiananmen Square,'' he said, ``except they're not bringing in the tanks'' - which is kind of like saying it's just like the Titanic, except there's no iceberg.

The battle over Valley cityhood has produced all kinds of overblown but entertaining comparisons. In a recent Washington Post story, William Fulton, president of the Solimar Research Group in Ventura, described Valley secessionists as being ``on a jihad to create a new city,'' conjuring up images of bearded militants strapping bombs to themselves along Ventura Boulevard, pulling Valley girls from the malls and forcing them to don burqas.

The editorialists at the Los Angeles Times have played up the same holy-warrior motif, describing the secession movement as a ``destructive crusade'' and its backers as ``zealots'' and an ``army of mercenaries.'' State Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles, has denounced secession as a ``movement to destroy this city.'' Hahn has alternately called secession a ``one-way ticket to financial disaster,'' a ``recipe for disaster,'' and, most famously of all, ``a disaster of biblical proportions.''

That last image is the most amusing - imagine a horde of locusts descending from the Santa Monica Mountains, consuming every strip mall and gas station in sight. Perhaps Hahn is secretly hoping for a great flood, one that washes out the middle-class malcontents on the Valley floor, thus bringing peace and a waterfront view to the more enlightened souls up in the hills.

Yet the portrayal of Vals as fundamentalist marauders or the four horsemen now riding in minivans and SUVs conflicts with City Hall's other favorite depiction of the cityhood crowd, that of hillbillies yearning for the bucolic simplicity of the 1960s TV hit ``Andy Griffith.''

Samantha Stevens, co-founder of the anti-secession group One L.A., told The Sacramento Bee that secessionists ``keep trying to sell this as a sort of Mayberry small town where you look across the street and see your council member mowing his lawn.'' The mayor's top political consultant, Kam Kuwata, echoed the sentiment in The New Republic, ridiculing secessionists who ``talk about it as though you're really gonna have a time clock that you turn back and all of a sudden you're there with Andy Griffith in Mayberry.''

For good measure, Hahn told the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce that ``We're not talking about creating Mayberry here.'' And City Council President Alex Padilla repeated the quote, almost verbatim, to a Washington Post reporter, saying, ``We're not talking about creating Mayberry.''

Everybody got that? No Mayberry! Kind of makes you think the anti-secession players are reading from the same cheat notes written for them by their high-priced consultants and strategists.

Of course, if cityhood backers are easily characterized as hopelessly idealistic, they did little to help their cause by choosing ``Camelot'' as one of the final contenders for their new city's name, giving rise to equally untenable visions of King Arthur and JFK.

The humor is apparently lost on Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment President Jeff Brain, who, according to The New Republic, got downright wistful when asked about the Camelot name. The magazine quotes Brain as saying ``in a low, earnest voice'' that he wanted to ``send a message to the naysayers ... I dare our opponents to tell us that we can't have our own Camelot.'' (Cue music: ``The Impossible Dream.'')

Of course, the Camelot references have served only to invite snickering among the public and more vitriol from City Hall. At an anti-secession rally in June, Hahn quipped, ``They call that Camelot! I call it'' - all together now - ``a recipe for disaster!''

L.A. political consultant Larry Levine has derided secession leaders who have ``likened themselves to the Founding Fathers of this country and want to propose that they call their city Camelot.'' Really, he says, ``they are more like the rebel army that tried to destroy this nation in the Civil War'' - thus equating independence-minded Vals with bellicose and racist slaveholders.

Picture Opie and Andy out on the plantation, fleeing from the horde of locusts, with Aunt Bee in tow - in her burqa.

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no caption (San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles area, Long Beach)