I do not know how many of you remember this haunting and heart wrenching rendition of what to me is the most beautiful Christmas Carol by Simon and Garfunkel. It was written and performed in 1966. The carol is sung along with the 7O'Clock News of the day, delivered in the dispassionate and clinical manner of newsreaders.
Half a century has gone. Christmas is round the corner and carols will be sung, amongst them Silent Night. The accompanying news bulletin, could be:
This is the early evening edition of the news.
In Peshawar, Pakistan, 9 gun men, said to belong to the Taliban,
entered the premisses of an army school and
shot 142 people, 132 of them children.
They lines up children and killed them in cold blood and also killed
children hiding under tables.
The killing went towards balancing account with
the Pakistan military.
The militants were overpowered after an
8 hours carnage.
In Bareilly, India, a 7 year old was beaten to death
by his school Principal for not doing his homework
and paying his fees.
The Principal is absconding.
In Dindoli, Gujarat, a woman was murdered and her
body was stuffed in a suitcase. The identity of the woman could not
be ascertained because of multiple wounds on her face.
The latest statistics for rape in India were made public.
33700 rapes were reported. That is one rape every
fifteen minutes.
That's the 7 o'clock edition of the news,
Goodnight.
Here is the news bulletin 49 years ago! Can the holy child still sleep in heavenly peace.
"7 O'Clock News / Silent Night"
Silent night
Holy night
All is calm
All is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.
This is the early evening edition of the news.
The recent fight in the House of Representatives was over the open housing
section of the Civil Rights Bill.
Brought traditional enemies together but it left the defenders of the
measure without the votes of their strongest supporters.
President Johnson originally proposed an outright ban covering discrimination
by everyone for every type of housing but it had no chance from the start
and everyone in Congress knew it.
A compromise was painfully worked out in the House Judiciary Committee.
In Los Angeles today comedian Lenny Bruce died of what was believed to be an
overdoes of narcotics.
Bruce was 42 years old.
Dr. Martin Luther King says he does not intend to cancel plans for an open
housing march Sunday into the Chicago suburb of Cicero.
Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogleby asked King to call off the march and the
police in Cicero said they would ask the National Guard to be called out
if it is held.
King, now in Atlanta, Georgia, plans to return to Chicago Tuesday.
In Chicago Richard Speck, accused murderer of nine student nurses, was brought
before a grand jury today for indictment.
The nurses were found stabbed an strangled in their Chicago apartment.
In Washington the atmosphere was tense today as a special subcommittee of the
House Committee on Un-American activities continued its probe into anti-
Viet nam war protests.
Demonstrators were forcibly evicted from the hearings when they began chanting
anti-war slogans.
Former Vice-President Richard Nixon says that unless there is a substantial
increase in the present war effort in Viet nam, the U.S. should look forward
to five more years of war.
In a speech before the Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New York,
Nixon also said opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single