“Is it true that water or urination would be difficult to fake?” Boliker asks. While Pixar would agree with that sentiment, Palm says that “a lot of things would be possible to fake at this level.” His theory is that VHS recorders were used to cover up the fakery—that the image degradation on the third- or fourth-generation copies sold on street corners and received by the Sun-Times’ Jim DeRogatis was an attempt to hide the cutting and pasting of a digital-effects maestro. Such changes would be easy to spot on the big screen, but much harder to suss out on a crappy video. (Also, while Palm doesn’t protest, Boliker isn’t being fair to him here. He’s not suggesting that the urine on the tape is a special effect. In the Palm scenario, all of the urine on the tape would be real; the fake part would be the head attached to the urinator’s body.)
The week of testimony ends with Kelly’s attorneys finally bidding adieu to the Little Man theory. The new defense premise: the Michael Jordan theory. The classic Gatorade ad showing the young Michael Jordan playing one-on-one against the old Michael Jordan, defense attorney Marc Martin says, reveals the kind of magic you can create by superimposing images. Watch the commercial, though, and you’ll notice that you rarely see the two Jordans’ faces at the same time; when you do, it looks fake. Not to mention that the video is short, cost a ton of money, and doesn’t show young Michael Jordan peeing on old Michael Jordan. I remain unconvinced, and I imagine the jury does as well.
more from Slate here.