Zapruder Revisited, Reviewed and Re-framed

[OldTigerCub]

On this Thanksgiving day most of us in America are getting ready to sit down, stuff ourselves, watch football, visit with friends and relatives and be thankful for the freedoms we enjoy and the abundances we too often take for granted.
On this day 44 years ago, however, one of the most traumatic events in our nation's history was unfolding, as a man with a rifle took the life of a popular, inspirational and powerful young man, the President of the United States.
In an Op. Ed. piece in the New York Times, Max Holland and Johann Rush take a look back, and point out an often overlooked point about the Zapruder film:

FORTY-FOUR years ago today, a clothing company owner named Abraham Zapruder filmed the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. And for 44 years, most people have presumed that his home movie captured the assassination in its entirety. This presumption has led to deep misunderstandings.

While not explaining all of the issues raised by conspiracy theorists, they do a nice job of pointing out why the film cannot be relied upon as a complete record of the entire event:

Zapruder’s 26-second movie has two distinct parts. Approximately seven seconds after he started filming from the north side of Elm Street, Zapruder stopped his Bell & Howell Zoomatic at frame 132 because only Dallas police motorcycles were driving by. He did not restart his camera until the president’s limousine was clearly in view. Consequently, Z 133 is the first frame to actually show the president’s Lincoln — a frame exposed several seconds after the car had made the sharp turn onto Elm Street from Houston Street — and, we believe, after Oswald had squeezed off his first shot.

In conclusion:

If this belated revelation changes nothing from one perspective — Oswald still did it — it simultaneously changes everything, if only because it disrupts the state of mind of everyone who has ever been transfixed by the Zapruder film. The film, we realize, does not depict an assassination about to commence. It shows one that had already started.

If nothing else, the piece serves to put things in perspective and point out that while the Zapruder film may be one of the most important pieces of evidence, it cannot be relied upon by itself to explain what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Here is wishing all of my friends at the JREF forums a happy Thanksgiving!