I'm Lori. Dial Me.

As any advertising executive with a breakfast-food account will tell you, the best way to a mother's pocketbook is through her children. Some Wisconsin Telephone Co. ads use an engaging little moppet named Lori Busk, 7, who urges mothers to buy a second telephone for the convenience of their tots. One ad begins with a hidden voice asking Lori, "Hey, what do you like most about extension phones?" Lori replies, "All the colors," adding, "They're convenient." She then explains convenience: "It means that when you're busy coloring in your room, you don't have to run downstairs to answer the phone."

All of which would be devastatingly cute if it were not also rather unsettling. At least State Representative Harout Sanasarian thinks so. He says that the phone company, a monopoly, should not make its customers pay for this kind of advertising: "It is a blatant example of entering into people's homes and causing conflict between a child and his parents." Wisconsin Telephone seems unperturbed by Sanasarian's crusade--especially since the company realized a record gain of 15,000 extension phones after it launched Lori last year.

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