FROM THE EDITOR



	Are you a mappie?



	According to ADWEEK writer Barbara Lippert, "mappie" stands, 

somewhat convolutedly, for "male [-bashing] angry professional"--in other 

words, a sort of female counterpart to that other media creation, "the 

angry white male," or a sort of Yuppie woman run amok.



	The reason "mappies" needed definition was because, apparently, 

they are now a sales target, and ADWEEK expects to see these creatures 

popping up on television screens as advertisers pitch to this 

"independent" mind group.  Not content to define liberation as the public 

ogling of men, as occurred in a memorable soft drink commercial last 

year, a different soft drink will now be hurled in the face of a 

presumably mild mannered gent who makes the mistake of insisting the 

product in question is a "diet" soda, to the aforesaid "mappie."



	Actually, when I read the story line of the commercial in 

question, I thought it was kind of funny, which probably qualifies me 

automatically as a mappie.  That I thought it was fun, however, did not 

mean I was going to run out for a case of the product, nor did it mean I 

was going to look for guys to pick on at the soda fountain, nor even that 

I thought it signaled a green light to behave impolitely to anyone, male 

or female.



	I suppose I'm a mappie, too, because I laughed out load at a 

USA TODAY ad for the Larry King Show on CNN, with King's guest, 

"Congressman and Sex Offender" Mel Reynolds.  I wondered if a.) Reynolds 

had accepted the invitation because it was a chance to talk to people on 

the phone, an employment of time Reynolds admitted in court he enjoyed, 

and b.) whether the folks at CNN feel that just a plain old Congressman 

who is not a convicted Sex Offender is to a worthy guest for King, or at 

least not worth advertising in advance.  Later, I was left to wonder 

about a world in which a United States Congressman waits a week so that 

he can announce his resignation on the King Show, instead of, say, at a 

town all meeting of the constituents who sent him to Washington originally.



	We live in times of instant definition, or, more properly, 

re-definition.  "Independent" women are a desirable target for any 

number of products, if not all products, because, one assumes, 

"independent" in this narrow consumer sense means in control of her own 

checkbook.  Independence used to mean a  lot more than just a gold credit 

card, but since the people in charge of defining us are only interested 

in what we can do for them, note what we can do for ourselves, let alone 

our country, we had better get used to this kind of narrow defining.



	I would expect this sort of compartmentalizing of people to 

increase, rather than decrease, as we move toward the last Presidential 

election of the 20th Century.  About the time I read about "mappies," the 

media was full of 75th anniversary stories of the 19th Amendment, the one 

that literally gave my grandmothers the vote.  I knew the dates 

historically, but reflected again that these two women, plus several 

other influential women in my life, got married and had children, and 

achieved any number of other milestones, before they were allowed a hand 

in choosing who would be president.  When history abuts our own lives so 

closely, it is a much more potent thing, there will be, inevitably, talk 

about the "gender gap" in politics, but it is less meaningful these days, 

as women vote now not as a lock-stepped block, but rather as individuals 

(or, as the Madison Avenue types would have it, mappies and yuppies and 

buppies, etc., etc.).



	To be sure, there are one or two issues that are probably more 

"female" than "male," but in general, we have (as we have always had) 

the same day-to-day concerns as men.  It used to be that "crime," for 

example, was considered a male issue.  I was never quite sure why, since 

during the periods when it was also a high priority item (the '30s and 

'60s), women were affected by it, but the evidence is there that we 

didn't place the same priority on it, as voters, as men did.  Now, 

however, we are just as likely to have to fill out or own insurance claim 

on the stolen car, or wonder if the bus is ever going to come after the 

third shift, so that crime is something we take rather more personally 

these days.



	Recently, I sat through a telephone poll on our County Executive 

race in which I was asked which of a list of things was my highest 

priority as a voter:  three of the four items concerned economic issues 

(taxes, jobs, welfare reform); the fourth was crime.  The interviewer

and I talked about all four, and when we discussed crime, it was framed 

in what I took to be a "female" way: Did I know, she asked, that the 

current County Executive had left a significant number of deputy sheriff 

jobs open to save money, but that meant there were 18 less people out in 

Erie Country to protect me?  (Perhaps its reverse sexism, but I don't 

think the discussion would have taken quite that personal a direction if I 

had been a man.)  I countered that I lived in the city (where the city 

police are apparently responsible for my personal safety), and That I 

thought the problem had less to do with the number of officers and more 

to do with how they were deployed and what happened after a crime was 

committed.



	Since the caller had asked for me by name, and was, I think, 

working off the registered voter list, she knew a few things about me to 

start with: my enrolled party, where I lived, my gender, my age, and 

maybe one or two other things.  Had it been a priority, for example, she 

could have figured out to which hyphenated-American group I belong (or at 

least half of it).  Not quite enough to decide if I was a mappie or not, 

but a few clues here and there.



	It will be interesting to see whether or not my status as a 

supposed-mappie (mappie sympathizer? Neomappie?) makes me a desirable 

voter.  Are we independent women, surely or otherwise, going to be 

focus-grouped and polled and whatnot, in order to make the best commercial 

possible to appeal to us (maybe a presidential candidate throwing a can 

of soda in the face of Congress or something)?



	As politicians are more and more ruled by the need to reach as 

many people as possible at the same time they are being told voters are 

definable by extremely narrow issues, we end up with a variant of the 

system we now have, but with the charge of pandering more and more 

applicable.  It is not possible to be all things to all people for very 

long--sooner or later, the politician will have to jump, with both 

Gucci-clad feet--one way or the other on issues which people care deeply 

about.



	It may be that today, when the poll taker calls, I'm more 

interested in crime than the additional 1% sales tax everyone pretended 

would only last for a year--five years ago.  But when I get into the 

voting booth, I may have just come from a shopping trip for new winter 

coat (a strangely popular election day sales tie-in in the Northeast) and 

find that I'm really frosted about the extra 12 to 20 bucks.



	Politicians, who live by the narrow definition, may die by it as 

well, if they persist in signaling to the electorate that they care 

about our personal, individual needs, and then proceed to ignore them.



	Gunowners, like mappies, have the opportunity to make those boys 

jump our way, if we choose to focus concern on that aspect of our 

personhood this time around.  It's about time the focusing was done by 

the voters and not to them.



	Diet soda, anyone?





Peggy Tartaro,

Executive Editor