Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

There was a big write-up today about the movie The Shawshank Redemption which was based on a novella by Stephen King. And, in this case, the movie was actually better than the book. Shawshank the movie is a masterpiece. 

It is surely the greatest prison movie of all time, and IMDB (Internet Movie Database) actually lists it as the #1 movie, period. 

It is the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker who gets wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover. They died in a motel fire which Andy was accused of starting. The fact was that he was stalking them, and he was seen in the vicinity at the time, and you could definitely say he had motive. But, he didn't do it, and that was central to the story.  

At Shawshank Prison in Maine, Andy befriends Red Redding, played by Morgan Freeman. In the novella, Red was a white guy with red hair, an Irishman. So, why'd they cast Freeman? It was mainly because there is a lot of narration in the movie, and they knew that nobody has a better narrator's voice than Morgan Freeman. 

Shawshank was not an instant success. It barely recouped its production costs at the box office. Why, I don't know. But, it has been very popular on television, being the second most aired movie of all time. 

Of course, the brutality of prison life was shown graphically- and that emanated from both the guards and the convicts. And, the corruption in the administration of the prison went all the way up to the warden- a cruel and vindictive man who even killed to protect his interests, despite his religiosity, or perhaps because of it.

Shawshank is brilliant storytelling and moviemaking, and if you haven't seen it, you really should. This movie will absorb you; you will really get into it. It is truly one of the greatest movies of all time.  

But, there is some irony involved here because Shawshank is a story about a man who is wrongly convicted of murder based on circumstantial evidence. So, Stephen King was able to conceive of that happening in a fictional story. But, when Stephen King set to writing a novel about the JFK assassination entitled 11/22/63 he never even considered that possibility. Stephen King convicted Lee Harvey Oswald, in his mind and on paper. He actually admitted basing his book on Case Closed by Gerald Posner, one of the worst JFK books ever written. 

11/22/63 is a very fanciful story involving time travel, and I'm not going to go into it except to say that King hates Oswald and depicts him as a very bad man. For instance, King pushed the claims of Oswald's physical abuse of Marina (claims that are dubious at best and denied outright by some, including John Armstrong) to severe beatings on the street in broad daylight- which was totally made up. What made King think he had the right to do that?

But, the big question is: why did King write his JFK novel the way he did? Stephen King is not a stupid man, and you don't have to be particularly smart to see that Oswald was framed and innocent. 

So, what the hell was King's problem? Did he write it the way he did because he realized that the media would never embrace his book if he challenged the official story? 

Well, I am not cynical enough to think that. So, why did King write his novel the way he did? In a word: patriotism. He, like a lot of people, doesn't want to believe that the national security state of the United States, including the Vice President, could murder President Kennedy and Officer Tippit and then two days later murder Oswald, after having framed him for both murders. 

This is America- not some banana republic- and we don't have bloody coups here. And we don't have leaders who kill their political enemies and then weave elaborate lies to incriminate innocent people for their dastardly crimes. And, we don't have leaders who callously and viciously deceive and bamboozle the entire population of the country, where every single person in America became a victim in the JFK assassination. That is not the kind of country we live in. We are the City on a Hill. We are exceptional; we believe in American exceptionalism.  So, it can't have happened that way because if it happened that way then the American dream, that we have all believed in our whole lives, is really the American nightmare. 

So, it is patriotism and the belief in American greatness that keeps Stephen King from facing the truth about the JFK assassination. 

And this patriotism, this belief in America as an ideal, even hampers the faculties of JFK researchers who should know better.

For example, take Harold Weisberg. Harold was a great researcher. In fact, his efforts were so valiant and so heroic, that his story could be made into a movie. Harold Weisberg saw a lot of things, but one thing he did not see is the role of photographic alteration and manipulation in the JFK assassination. His mind never went there. 

Why didn't he go there? It was the same reason: patriotism. This is America. It's not the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. In those despotic countries, altering images to sell propaganda to the masses was a common practice. But, this is America, and we don't do that kind of shit here. Do we?

Of late, Doug Horne has been pushing the recognition of Zapruder film alteration- hard. And he's even been calling out other researchers by name for opposing it or remaining silent about it. Doug has had it. He knows the Zapruder film was criminally altered, and he refuses to tolerate any more nonsense to the contrary. 

Good for you, Doug. More sympathetic to that I could not be. But please consider that if they altered the Zapruder film- and they definitely did, as you well know- then there is absolutely no chance that they altered just that one. All of the films and images wound up in government hands, and they had the means, motive, and opportunity to alter all of them. The Altgens photo was severely altered. And the Wiegman, Hughes, Martin, and Towner films, and also the DPD footage of Oswald were all altered and falsified. And, I can readily lay out the evidence for that to Doug or anyone else. 

But, I am pointing to the mental thing: if you know the Zapruder film was altered then you need to examine every single JFK film and image searching for signs of criminal alteration. That's a given, and naivete about the greatness of America is no excuse not to do it. Think it couldn't happen here? Get over it. Snap out of your trance. Feeling patriotic? That's a handicap in studying the JFK assassination, so put it away.