monday, October 6, 1980
lincoln, nebraska vol. 105, no. 31
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Moral Majority leader says Christians must vote
Photo by Mitch Hrdlicka
By Bill Graf
All good Christians must get out and be heard this
Election Day, the leader of the Oklahoma Moral Majority
said Friday.
"I don't believe you're a good citizen if you're not
registered to vote. And to be a good Christian you must
be a good citizen," the Rev. Jim Vineyard said at a Moral
Majority meeting at the Airport Holiday Inn.
"Don't let them tell you that the separation of church
and state takes away your right to work for a candidate,"
he said.
Vineyard gave several reasons why he thinks Christians
need to get out the vote.
"At this point in tune the United States is not militari
ly prepared," he said. "The Soviet Union is developing a
particle beam weapon that will be able to blow up our
Minuteman missiles in midair."
Once the particle beam weapon is perfected, "the
Soviet Union will be able to blackmail the United States
of America into submission," he said.
Also, since legalized abortion came about, "two million
babies have been aborted, which is the moral equivalent of
murder," Vineyard said.
"We've murdered more babies than Hitler murdered
Jews," he said.
President Jimmy Carter's stand on the Equal Rights
Amendment is another reason to vote for Ronald Reagan,
Vineyard said.
"I'm not for equal rights for women. I'm for superior
rights for women," he said.
To illustrate his point, Vineyard said he knew of a case
where a woman who had joined the Army had to share a
shower with men while in the Held.
"When her time came to use the shower the men would
also use the shower and say suggestive and lewd remarks
to her," he said. "She volunteered, so there isn't much
that can be done. But if the ERA is passed they'll be
drafting the girls from our church."
Vineyard also cited the fight against gay rights and
pornography as reasons to support candidates who sup
port Christian morals.
"Moral Majority is pro-moral, pro-family, pro-life, pro
American and against people who want to do their own
thing. God didn't teach that," he said.
Vineyard warned the crowd not to pay attention to the
"liberal media."
"They think that we're all crazy, that we're all fanatics.
The liberal news media is made up of people who were
educated by secular humanists. They're amoral, evolution
ist and atheistic. More people believe like we do than like
they do," he said.
Vineyard filled in for Dr. Robert Billings, the schedul
ed speaker. Billings is Reagan's religious liaison and a
former executive director of Moral Majority.
Journalist calls conventions 'TV spectaculars'
By Steve Miller
"People are enamored with the horse
race and not what's at stake. It's not a
game though, it's our lives, and we should
take it more seriously."
Sanford Grossbart, UNL marketing pro
fessor used this analogy to explain why
media audiences hear more about the pres
idential candidates' campaign strategies
than about their plans for the country.
Grossbart and Dick Herman of the Lin
coln Journal spoke to a group of about 25
people Friday night at the Glass Onion res
taurant on "The Process of Selling a Presi
dent." Herman said he thought political con
ventions had become television spectacu
lars and this affected action at the conven
tion. He noted that main events were
scheduled for prime time.
Sen. George McGovern's presidential
campaign was doomed at the 1972 Demo
cratic National Convention, Herman said,
because McGovern didn't give his accep
tance speech until 4 ajn.
Herman also explained why the media
pick up on many mistakes candidates make
in their speeches.
"If you're following the campaign it's
deathly boring," Herman said. "You hear
the same speeches over and over again.
"Only when a goof is made is the press
alerted."
Grossbart said he thought the 1896 race
between William Jennings Bryan and
William McKinley was the first campaign
that tried to use marketing techniques.
He. said Bryan was the first candidate
to undertake a massive road campaign,
traveling thousands of miles while McKin
ley used a plan of "rational allocation of
(campaign) literature."
Since then strategy has not changed
radically, Grossbart said. He added that he
thought the role of electronic media is
overestimated, and that movement of can
didates remains the most important part
of their strategies.
Grossbart also discounted the myth that
"telogenic"candidates, those that look
good on camera, are most likely to
succeed, noting the success of Richard
Nixon.
Continued on Page 6
Taring' the dead is part of anthropologist's job
By Bill Graf
The statement that dead men tell no tales isn't true any
longer, according to a Lincoln forensic anthropologist.
Given a skull, five pounds of modeling clay, a couple of
glass eyes and three days of work, Richard McWilliams can
put a face on a mystery skull.
McWilliams recently was called on to reconstruct the
face of a murder victim found north of Omaha. The
identity of the victim still is unknown.
With the help from McWilliams and by circulating
sketches of the reconstructed face, police hope to discover
the dead man's identification. Then pershaps they can
determine who killed the man.
McWilliams explained that there are 15 points on the
average face where skin depth is fairly constant among all
people.
McWilliams said he cuts pencil erasers the depth of the
skin at each point and glues them to a copy of the skull.
Then, he models clay on the face to the depth of each
eraser and tapers the clay between each eraser.
The tricky part, he said, is when he refashions the eyes,
ears, nose and lips, because these features are not evident
from the skull. However, he determined that the victim
was of northern European decent. So he used the eyes,
ears, nose and hps that are characteristic of northern
Europeans.
Originally, McWilliams said, he planned to give the face
blue eyes. But one of his blue glass eyes was broken, so
the face has brown eyes instead.
As McWilliams displayed the box of glass eyes, he
laughed and said, "Halloween around here is lots of fun."
Scott Mitchell, an investigator with the Douglas
County Sheriffs office, said the unidentified victim was 5
57, 175 pounds and in his late 20s or early 30s. Mitchell
also said the victim was found wearing motorcyclist
clothes.
McWilliams got into this line of work while working on
a post-graduate degree in anthropology at Oklahoma
University.
"There are few jobs at best for an anthropologist," he
said. So McWilliams went to work at a Federal Aviation
Administration's medical office near Norman, Okla.
Under the direction of Betty Gatliff, he started his
work in forensic anthropology. Gatliff is one of about six
people in the United States who rebuilds faces. She also
was the technical adviser tor an episode of the television
series, "Quincy." In the show, Quincy finds a skull in the
desert and a forensic anthropologist reconstructs the face.
McWilliams' work is concerned mainly with identifying
bones. McWilliams explained that there are several ways to
determine the sex of a skeleton.
A male skull has brow ridges. The jaw of a male is more
of a right angle and the male pelvis is smaller, he said.
The male pelvis also is used to determine age. The
opposing bones on the front of the male pelvis wear at a
predictable rate, so depending on the amount of wear, the
anthropologist can determine age.
Female pelvises don't wear at a constant rate, he said.
He said that it may have something to do with child
bearing, but no one is quite sure.
A female skeleton can be aged almost to the year if the
skeleton is younger than 21 by judging the maturity of
the bones and the maturity of the wisdom teeth. After 21 ,
one way to determine age is to study the shoulder ball.
McWilliams also said that he can tell if a skeleton be
longed to a laborer or someone who was slightly built or
if the person suffered from anemia.
"Muscles will mark bone. Bones are living tissue and
will react to pressure or disease," he said.
McWilliams has been called on several times in recent
years to identify skeltons that turn up around the area.
Most skeletonshe said, are neither human nor victims of
foul play.
"Bodies turn up all the time, but the authorities need
to be given enough evidence to leave it alone," he said.
"But when I get a good gruesome, blood and guts
case, that's when it becomes fun."
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Forensic anthropologist Richard McWilliams has
reconstructed the face of a murder victim found
north of Omaha. By circulating sketches of the
reconstruction, police may discover the identity
of the victim and eventually determine who killed
him.
