"The first time I heard 'Peggy Sue' I was twelve years old..."

Since I lost my faithful laptop a few weeks ago, my iTunes library has consisted mostly of CDs of my dad's that I like and have copied onto my computer. Among these is Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 classic Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. The closing track of which, "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night", I find strangely compelling.
Normally I am against voice-overs/ spoken word tracks in pop-music (cf. Rowan "Mr. Bean" Atkinson's excerpt from "The Song of Solomon" in the shitty Cold-Play-esque number played over the closing credits of Keeping Mum or Belle & Sebastian's "I Dreamt I Had to Go to Mars), but I make an exception for this one. It's not the "arty" juxtaposition of the news anchor's objective, almost cynical delivery of the day's tumultuous events against the innocent serenity of the Nativity, but the way the song preserves the Zeitgeist on so many levels (though allmusic.com somewhat rashly dismisses this effect for "dating" the album). For starters, the fact that something like this could be considered (by industry bigshots!) innovative enough not to be a throwaway B-Side.
This particular 7 O'Clock News comes from August 3, 1966 (I assume this is the date, since that's when Lenny Bruce died) and it preserves for us a view of the 60's from someone who doesn't know if it's going to all be ok, even though the original master has probably long been lost to "deep-storage". I am told the kids call these "primary sources".
The first real jolt comes in the very beginning of the song, just after the anchorman fades-in enough to be audible over Simon's sparse acoustic guitar arrangement. What kind of country is this where an equal-opportunity housing bill can't even get past the House Judiciary Committee? Did this actually happen in America? Living in a time where black people are no longer openly fire-hosed for trying to have a sandwich with white folks, the idea that such a bill would have "no chance from the start", moreover that "everyone in Congress knew it" quite simply boggles my mind. What really got me started on this post, though, was the phrase "former Vice-President Richard Nixon". Don't you guys know! Watergate? China? The Madman Theory! Of course they don't know. Of course they don't. Neither do they know that Martin Luther King Jr. will be shot dead almost exactly 19 months after this newscaster informs us of King's plans to protest housing discrimination in Chicago, even in the face of the Illinois National Guard. In the end of course, the song turns my thoughts to the future. We don't know if it's going to be ok. What will people in 2046 (assuming there is one) find unconscionable when they come across the 2006 news? Of course the Iraq - Vietnam parallel can be drawn, but in forty years will the United States be stuck in an unwinnable war against Zimbabwe? Will we celebrate Barney Frank Day after he's gunned down fighting for gay rights? And will we be too jaded to listen when Paul Simon's Head In A Jar tries to tell us about it?