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Daily Nebraskan
Tuesday, March 16, 1982
Editorial
Moral Majority loses in poll
The latest Harris Survey results indicate
that whether or not the Moral Majority
really is moral, it is not a majority. Survey
respondents voted against the expressed
stands of the Moral Majority on all but one
of the issues in the survey; the lone except
ion was overwhelming support for prayer
in classrooms.
While one poll shouldn't be taken as
political gospel, the results are significant
in light of the awesome power and grass
roots support the Moral Majority claimed
to have in the wake of the 1980 elections.
Complete analysis of the 1980 elections
and the Liberal Armageddon that resulted
from them will probably take years, but
the key is that everybody thinks the Moral
Majority and conservative groups like it
were the deciding factors in the election.
That belief is what the Harris Survey
results cast into serious doubt.
The issues in question, such as federal
handgun registration, affirmative action
programs for women and minorities, the
proposed constitutional amendment to ban
abortions and the aforementioned allow
ance of daily prayers in school classrooms,
are the "social issues" at the very heart of
the Moral Majority's existence.
As reported Monday in The Lincoln
Star, Louis Harris himself said in an unusu
al summary statement, "It is possible that
one of the more serious misreadings of
public opinion in modem times has been
made by the conservatives who clajm
massive backing for these issues and by the
liberals who have publicly despaired at the
ideological size of the right and its follow
crs. All of this could spell considerable
trouble for the Moral Majority as well as
for candidates who base their campaigns on
these issues, We might even find candidates
in the unusual position of trying to avoid
too obvious an alliance with the Moral
Majority for fear of losing votes among
those people who don't align with the
organization.
The question that remains unanswered
by the Harris Survey is whether the advant
ages indicated in these results will be trans
lated into votes in the 1982 elections.
Even in 1980, a presidential election
year, only a little more than half of the
eligible voters went out and voted. This
year, in the "off-year" elections, the total
could be even lower. Further, conservative
campaigners may decide to bury these
potentially disastrous issues and focus in
stead on the latest developments in LI
Salvador or any sign of economic recovery,
no matter how faint, that might be avail
able by summer. The result could be that
the electorate will vote in (or fail to vote
out) legislators who disagree with them on
social issues.
No doubt the Moral Majority will scoff
at the Harris Survey results and contend
that because of some combination of
sampling error and slanted wording of the
questions, the results are meaningless.
There would be no question of a sampling
error, though, if the opinions expressed in
this survey in February are expressed again
as votes in November.
Reach out and touch those obscene phone calls
At 1 a.m. the phone rang. My initial thought was that
somebody had died. What else could it be'.' Any sane per
son wouldn't call at this time unless it was a crisis.
My answering machine picked up the phone for me and
let me hear the call.
Nobody had died. Bur I was right. The caller was not
sane, just obscene. My faithful phone answerer wisely
hunt; up on the child. I looked up what the phone book
X
Bill Rush
had to say about harassing phone calls. It advises that i
you get a phone call in which the caller doesn't identify
himself after the second time you say hello or in which
the caller says a dirty word or phrase, hang up, don't give
any information until the caller identifies himself, and if
the calls persist, contact your phone company representa
tive or the police.
I thought about its suggestions. They were okay, but
here are a few of my own:
- Don't hang up on the caller. Tell whoever is calling
to hold for a 'minute and then go back to bed. In the
morning pick up the phone and announce that the call
had been traced and the police are on their way. lie polite
and thank the person for calling.
If you are the sociable type, read to the caller from a
boring textbook, such as the one from your geology class.
After all, the caller has rocks in his head.
Describe in great detail you aunt's gallbladder opera
tion or, better yet, have your aunt describe it.
Discuss the meaning of life or the elements of logic
with the caller. (If you know a more boring subject, such
as the love lives of virgin goldfish, discuss that with the
caller.)
Ask the caller to do something that is beyond his
mentality. Counting to four will probably be too compli
cated for most callers, but play it safe - ask the caller to
count to six.
Psychologists say the general reason people make an
noying calls is that the caller can't strike up a conversation
with somebody in the normal manner. The caller then be
comes frustrated. The frustration turns to anger. Then,
the caller makes obscene calls to the person who is frustra
ting them.
If you're one of these frustrated callers, try these tac
tics instead of making obscene phone calls:
Iry placing an ad in the paper requesting a meeting
at Union Square.
- Act stupid and ask to bonow notes if you have a
class with this person, and then pretend their handwriting
is too hard to read.
- Trip the person in the hall, and then help him or her
to get up.
- Sing songs under the person's balcony - if he or she
has a balcony.
- If all else fails, go up the person, look the person
straight in the eye and say "Hi."
The worst you can get is a slap across the face. The
best thing that can happen is you'll make a friend.
One more thing that you should know: Making ob
scene phone calls is a crime under both Nebraska law and
federal laws, and the penalties for making harassing phone
calls are six months in prison andor a $500 fine. And
computer traces make it easy to catch a caller.
Surely there is a better way of reaching out and touch
ing someone.
What is the secret of life ?Look in your desk
I refer now to all those jokes about the meaning of
life. I refer to the jokes about how someone goes through
the jungle and the desert and then climbs the Himalayas
in search of the wise man who will tell him what life is.
I know what life is. Life is a desk.
At least my life is like my desk. Sometimes I manage
to get my desk almost cleared off - almost perfect.
The mail gets done and things get stacked in neat little
Richard Conen
piles. The press releases get placed in one pile, the drop
dead letters in another pile and the reasonable letters
telling me how wonderful I am in another pile.
All this gets stacked and then taken care of - letter
by letter. 1 take trie articles I have clipped from the news
papers, try to remember why I have clipped them and
usually wind up throwing them away. I work at this
sort of thing for hours and hours, usually on a Saturday.
But always, always, always, there are letters I cannot
answer and clippings I just have to clip and, of course,
a phone call I just have to make. So my desk never gets
cleaned up.
It is the same with me. I am, I think, always close to
perfection - not perfection in some goody-goody way,
but perfection in the sense of self-knowledge. Occasion
ally, I get seized by fits of insight into myself and then
I resolve to do things differently - better. Not only that,
but f rue the fact that I did not know earlier in my life
what I now know. It would have made things so much
easier. I would be, without doubt, more popular and
richer and more successful and, there is always the chance,
taller. Someday, I will be taller than I am now.
Anyway, always I think I am on the verge of just
knowing all about myself, understanding me. But it
never happens. Something comes along and I react to it
in some strange or different way and then I have to con
clude that I was not even close. I have to start all over
again and then, after some work, I get closer and then
closer still until, like the almost clean desk, I think I am
on the verge of actually doing it - knowing precisely
who I am.
Maybe there are people who know exactly who they
are. I used to think that most people were like that. They
are formed, complete, not always on the verge of getting
somewhere, not - as someone once said of Bobby Ken
nedy - in a state of becoming, but already there. They
got "there" in the Army or maybe at business or engineer
ing school, but wherever they got it, they knew at 20
or 21 who they were - no ifs, ands or buts.
These were the people who knew very early on what
they wanted to do in life. They got engaged to the person
they dated in liigh school and they married that person
exactly four years later. They had children on schedule
and bought homes on schedule and became grandparents
on schedule. They did not jog and think about dropping
out and wonder what it would be like to be Burt Rey
nolds. -
I think I see these people on the street and I imagine
what their desks look like. They are neat. They make me
wonder if you can tell all you need to know about a per
son from their desks. I don't think so, but I have a friend
who thinks he can look at a married couple's bedroom
and tell about their sex life. The grander the bedroom, the
more ornate it is than the rest of the house, the worse
the sex life. I don't know if this is true, but I thought I
would mention it as my way of helping the bedroom fur
niture industry.
Maybe this works with bedrooms and not with desks.
Maybe, in fact, it works with garages or attics or closets.
I don't know. All I know is that my desk suits me and
that this is not the way I thought things would turn out.
When I was a kid, I thought adults knew everything
with certainty. They knew - just knew - how to deal
with headwaiters and how to make witty toasts and how
to stay awake for the drive home after a dinner at some
relative's house. Self-knowledge was also one of those
things.
But this is not the.case. The purely physical uncertain
ties of childhood have been replaced by mental ones.
The body I had yesterday is the body I have today. It
is the mind that I do not know. This is not the way I
thought it would be. I thought by now I would know my
self. Instead, I know :omething else. I know what life is.
It's a desk.
(c) 1982, The Washington Post Company
Editorial policy
Unsigned editorials represent the policy of the spring
1982 Daily Nebraskan but do not necessarily reflect the
views of the University of Nebraska, its employees or the
NU Board of Regents.
The Daily Nebraskan 's publishers are the regents, who
have established a publication hoard to supervise the daily
production of the newspaper. According to policy set by
the regents, the content of the t'L student newspaper
lies solely in the hands of its students editors.
