(VCR tape clacking)
(TV static)
(garage door whirring)
(exhaling loudly)
(laughing) (dramatic music)
- 10 years of my life.
- [Interviewer] When you guys worked on the show,
did you guys ever hear some of the urban legends
or the rumors of Barney?
(laughing nervously)
- Like which one?
- Barney hides drugs in his tail.
- When he wasn't filming, he'd go and, you know,
do some lines of coke or something.
- He hung himself in his suit.
- My mom called me once crying and I was like,
mom, what's going on?
She's like, "Baby, I just heard you committed suicide."
(dinosaur laughing)
- Barney was a predator.
- I absolutely love children!
- Barney was the anti-Christ.
- [Man] When you played the song backwards,
it had some kind of crazy meaning to it.
- [Man] Barney has become the leader of a children's cult.
- Most programs began with a kind of seance
in which they conjure up Barney.
- [All] Barney!
- I can't tell you how far from the truth this is.
- Barney's so impossibly wholesome.
There is that desire to pop the balloon.
- For the Barney kids and a lot of people
that were connected to the show,
they were in for some dark times,
especially Sheryl's son, Patrick.
- [Woman] Sheryl Leach created Barney
just as a friend for her son.
(helicopter whirring) (sirens blaring)
- [Man] I heard the victim yell, "Hey, I'm shot."
- It's like stranger than fiction.
- [Interviewer] What happened to Patrick?
- How he ends up the way he did?
I don't know. I think it could happen to anybody.
(TV static)
- [Interviewer] So, what are you gonna be able to say now
about Patrick that's different than before?
(TV static)
So, you felt like there was more to tell?
- Yes. I think there is more to tell
and I just felt uncomfortable because
I didn't want to say anything that would
just misrepresent the situation.
I've had more time to think about Patrick,
and I just realized that I could be honest
and I can tell you what happened without it being unkind.
Sheryl is so kindhearted that it would just be horrible
to say something that would hurt her.
But I wasn't super surprised that Patrick
had gotten in and out of some trouble.
Patrick was just a super active little boy
that would kind of test his limits.
If someone says don't run with a glass in your hand,
he was kind of more of a "what if."
But what if I did it?
You can tell him, don't do it, like on the playground
and then they're gonna do it and run and chip their tooth.
That was kind of the boy that he was.
- There were a lot of factors making life tough for Patrick.
When you have something like Barney
and it becomes a runaway success,
that has gotta come with a cost.
- I feel like the success of Barney
probably did change the family dynamics.
Sheryl wasn't around as much because she was working.
Once Barney became big, there were a lot of people
that felt very, very strongly they loved it
and a lot of people that didn't love it.
When I babysat for Patrick,
I did get the feeling that Sheryl was concerned.
She did make it clear, just don't let him out of your sight
because of the level of hatred towards Barney.
(TV static)
- In a Galveston, Texas, K-mart, three boys,
age, 10, 11, and 12, attacked a man dressed up as Barney.
They punched Barney and tried to tear off
the dinosaur's head and--
- [Man] And a college student arrested
for assault and battery of Barney.
- Barney bashing got to a point where it got
bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
- Well, top 10 things that will get you on the evening news.
At number two, beat the crap out of Barney
in a Texas shopping mall.
(audience cheering and laughing)
- As music director on Barney, the first time
I really heard about Barney bashing was when I was
nominated for a Grammy and I was interviewed
by a local radio station.
And phone calls came in and there were people saying,
his music drives me crazy.
Man, I'd just love to get my fingers around that guy's neck.
I was surprised that they felt like
they wanted to do me physical harm.
And that wasn't just one or two phone calls.
I mean, there was more than that.
And it got to the point where I, you know,
back in the good old days, I unlisted my phone number.
I was in fear and I got actual death
and dismemberment-of-my-family emails.
I really don't wanna revisit that.
That was a terrible time.
It hurt so bad.
(fanfare)
- [Announcer] On your mark, get set.
We're writing on the internet.
- Email. I heard that's really neat.
(internet dialing up)
- My email address on AOL somehow got out
into the directories of K through 12 schools
across the country.
And I started getting emails.
- [Computer] You've got mail.
- From middle school kids, especially.
And some of them were very nice
and some of them were absolutely hateful.
They were very explicit and very violent.
There was one email that asked,
"Are you the Barney that I stabbed
"and shot outside of new Orleans?"
And then they went on to say, you know,
they were going to come and find me
and they were going to kill me.
(ravens cawing)
And the ravens are, it's an omen.
Virtually all the kids who were writing to me
were in middle school.
Just the thought that a child has this idea
to write to someone that they don't know
and to threaten their life, it makes you wonder
what the motivation is for that
and where the emotion for that came from
because it's just really disturbing.
But I think it also has to do with peer pressure.
(laughing)
Their friends say, you know, you have to hate this character
because it's just not cool.
- Well, then you have to watch all these like,
Barney videos and stuff, so you don't get to watch
any cool TV for like, years or something.
- Whoa, (chuckling) having babies sucks.
(chuckling)
- I think we have to examine ourselves and say,
why do kids do that?
- [Anchorman] Our local Care 11 TV Station ran an experiment
to see if kids reacted differently
as they watched different kinds of programming.
- [Reporter] On the first day, we had the kids watch Barney.
* Q, R, S, T, U, V *
- I could hear in my head advertisements for some kind of,
you know, action toy or something.
And it's always the mean read. (speaking in deep voice)
You know, now get this action pack and watch things happen.
You know, this kind of, you know, let's be bad,
let's be tough, let's be really, really strong and macho.
- [Reporter] On day two, it's the Power Rangers,
the popular teeny-bopper superheroes doing good
by beating the living daylights out of anyone doing bad.
Here are the kids with Barney.
* Yankee Doodle went to town *
- [Reporter] And here are the kids with the Power Rangers.
- I'm Power Ranger! - Joseph!
(kids tussling)
- That's coming at these kids and we say,
this is how you can be cool.
It's advertisements.
It's really everywhere.
(video game blasting) (dramatic music)
- I have never particularly thought of myself as a nice guy
because I don't really act very nice.
I am abrasive. I am rude, I am loud.
So once we had the internet,
I just sort of jumped immediately in.
- [Anchorman] No surprise, the web is a haven
for these anti-Barney activists.
- Warning: Parents with three year olds are advised
to cover those innocent little eyes.
- My name is Sean Breen under the handle of
Malaclypse the Seeker.
I was a member of and the last leader of
the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur.
(contemplative instrumental music)
I was just ending my sophomore year of high school
and I found the Jihad to Destroy Barney
on the worldwide web, the original webpage.
In 1994, that webpage was one of the first
10 to 15,000 webpages ever.
It was alt.Barney.dinosaur.die.die.die.
- Jihad was a movement started by
a group of college students who found Barney
to be extraordinarily annoying.
- It was a heady experience in a lot of ways.
And, and hang on a second.
I think the phone's vibrating.
Oh, spam call.
(Bleep) you.
Okay. Sorry.
Where was I? Right. Early internet.
The Jihad to Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur
is a collaborative role play session
where we were super soldiers fighting a shadow war
against Barney the Dinosaur.
This is the Jihad to Destroy Barney Role Playing Game
and Writer's Guide.
- Oh, look at this.
This is awesome.
Okay, here come the readers.
(laughing) This.
The Hellwyrm Barney.
The Jihad's primary adversary, the top villain,
the great demon, B'harne sits on a throne of skulls.
- Some call him a minion of Satan.
Barney must be destroyed.
All else is irrelevant.
- Oh, my.
- Our criticism of Barney was that
it was all about conformity and consensus,
and that's absolutely a very '90s attitude.
On the internet, we were all rebels, you know,
fighting against the stifling conformity of the normies.
- At first, Sheryl didn't really care that much
about Barney bashing, but at the point it got violent,
that was kind of the last straw.
- When the one baseball mascot beat up the guy
in the Barney costume, there's a line that gets crossed.
- [Interviewer] Right, go ahead.
- Okay.
I'm Ted Giannoulas, also known as the famous
San Diego Chicken, and Barney filed a lawsuit against me
because they thought that I was plum for the pickings.
(quirky instrumental music)
I'm in semi-retirement now, but I went pretty strong
all over the world for about four decades.
- [Reporter] When he is there, it normally means a sellout.
It's a popularity that has caused his income to rise
from $2 an hour to an estimated $400,000 a year.
- [Ted] In live attendance, I've performed
before more than 75 million people.
- [Barry] Any thoughts on your next eight years?
What are you after?
- One really important thing.
Can you get me a date with the NBC Peacock?
- [Barry] Barry Bernson for NBC News, Chicago.
- I was introduced to Barney via television,
and I thought it was kind of cute.
But as their character got more and more notoriety,
I figured, oh, you know, I gotta work this into my act.
So I decided to do a dance-off contest
with Barney the Dinosaur.
So here I am on the field doing my hip-hop dancing
and then what comes out of the visiting team dug out
but Barney the Dinosaur.
In his little lollipop dancing for kids,
and suddenly he breaks into this great break-dancing
that puts me to shame.
(crowd cheering)
And now I'm ticked off as he dances away.
This is my gig, this is my show.
I run across the diamond and I gang tackle him.
And then a little bit of remorse.
I help him up.
I dust him off and then he has a little accident
going into the dugout.
Sucker!
You trusted me.
I was just looking for a laugh, that's it.
(crowd cheering)
- And we finally said, we can't do this anymore.
It's too much.
- So, I remember Sheryl saying about the Barney bashing
that, you know, it's like you bashing my child
because this is, Barney is my child.
- There are some times when things by adults undermine
the role models that we have created for our children.
I think that it does do damage.
- We all wanted to protect Barney.
A lot of what we were trying to protect wasn't just Barney,
but the child that's now in love with Barney.
(internet dialing up)
- [Sean] December of 2000, we're all chilling
and one of our members gets an email.
- [Computer] You've got mail.
- From a group of lawyers claiming to represent Barney
and they said, you're diluting the trademark of Barney.
- I'm sorry, but you must cease and desist.
We have to do a lot of that.
- So we freak the (bleep) out because
we're all a bunch of college kids and teenagers
and none of us have jobs.
We can't afford to fight this.
- I was doing the routine for about two years, I'd say,
before I got the cease and desist letter
from the Barney people.
And so, I got in contact with Ken Fitzgerald.
- He was worried because the company that owned Barney
have very deep pockets and they were threatening to sue him
for copyright infringement,
but he wanted to fight for his right.
- [Interviewer] Why do you think the adults disliked Barney?
- Have you seen it?
(laughing)
- And now, time for another lesson from Barney,
the Purple Dinosaur.
How to file a lawsuit.
They say it upsets Barney's young fans
and they're asking for $100,000 in copyright damages
for each time the chicken used Barney's likeness in a skit.
- They've maintained that little kids were too young
to understand that this wasn't the real Barney,
as if there was a real Barney.
- We're talking about a character that is,
for a lot of kids, their first friend,
and he's their best friend.
(audience cheering)
All these children out there are watching, you know,
this other character beat up their best friend.
How traumatic could that be?
- I walked to the podium and Judge Grady Jolly,
before I said anything, looked at me and said,
"Mr. Fitzgerald, when is your client
"gonna stop picking on poor ol' Barney?"
- Let me get my glasses for this.
- I said, well, Your Honor, he'll stop doing this act
when people stop laughing because he's a comedian
and everybody understands this is comedy, it's parody,
and the law protects it.
- We therefore agree with the district court
that Giannoulas' use of the caricature
clearly qualifies as a parody.
Woo hoo!
- The Fifth Circuit not only affirmed dismissing the case
and throwing it out for lack of merit,
Sheryl Leach had to pay our attorney's fees.
I really do hate Barney.
- [Reporter] It is okay for the San Diego Chicken
to beat up Barney the Dinosaur.
- So, a lesson learned.
Barney gets a teachable moment.
(cackling)
- We didn't win the lawsuit.
It hurts, man.
Again, it's like somebody taking your child
and doing crazy things to your child.
- The Barney lawyers, they had threatened to sue
all the members of the Jihad
and we waited and we waited, but they were bluffing.
They told us to cease and desist.
We didn't cease and they desisted.
- Our in-house legal team, can I say feckless on the air?
They were feckless.
- The lawsuits basically turned Barney
into just another joke, and after all the years
of Barney bashing, threats and lawsuits,
it really was like a slap in the face for Sheryl.
She'd spent so much time and energy building this character
and I think it was starting to take a toll on her.
I think all that had to have been rough
on her marriage with Jim.
And then, there was Patrick.
At this time, Patrick is, you know, 12 years old.
He's going into his teenage formative years.
- [Man] Hi Patrick.
- Patrick, the reason we're all here--
- [Man] Yes. - And his mom loves him.
(smooching lips)
- Sheryl was doing a lot for the show
and really, that occupied a lot of her time.
- [Sheryl] He's the apple of my eye.
- [Man] Aah.
- She wanted to be there more for Patrick.
So, in 1998, Sheryl decided to leave the show.
- Well, you know, as they say in show business,
it's always good to leave on top.
But she was missed.
Oh, she was missed very, very, very much so.
- She really was the heart of the show itself.
- Once Sheryl departed, it really was never the same again.
- In, you know, early 2000s,
two core members of the cast walk away.
- Hi, gang. Here we go.
(bright music)
I left because I got bored as a performer.
See ya. See ya, kids. So long! (chuckling)
- I figured after 10 years, I've done Barney,
I've always wanted to move to Los Angeles
to do other acting.
Police! Hands on your heads!
- God! Officer, I can explain.
- You can explain why you're breaking into this house?
But Barney, to me, man, that was amazing.
- I guess that's a wrap.
- The producers hire a new voice actor for Barney.
- I'm so glad you came to play.
- And a new body actor. And the show went on.
After Sheryl leaves the show, they sell Barney
to a huge media company for $275 million.
- By the time it got to the sale,
it was more of, how much money can you make here?
Because these are now large corporations coming in.
- They're looking for ways to increase ratings.
And so, they start to mess around with Sheryl's
all love, all the time formula of Barney.
- They were trying to change things like
put conflict into these stories.
- But we have to take turns.
That's how you play the game.
- Well, it's not how I play the game.
- And then, they introduce a new character into the mix.
(laughing) - Hi, I'm Riff.
Let's go have some fun with Barney.
(saxophone music)
- They wanted Riff to be a little edgy.
He was gonna be musical.
He was this, you know, big inventor.
He was really out there.
He was sort of hip hop.
I believe there, urban was used as a descriptive.
- When someone comes in, it's always gotta change it,
gotta change it, make it new.
You know, that's just the way it is.
Even if it's not broken,
they just wanna put their mark on it.
- Really, the Barney that I grew up with
was no longer there.
- The creative was gone.
It was just all about the money.
In 2010, "Barney and Friends," unfortunately, was canceled.
It literally broke my heart.
It was like a part of my heart
had just been ripped out a little bit.
- Barney's a huge impact of my growth as an actor,
as a man.
Barney's in my heart.
Looking at this brings it all home.
(sniffling)
Oh man, I love you, Barney.
Oh, I love you, Barney. I love you, Barney.
- But at the same time, not many brands
can say that they had a run like Barney did.
- You know, in Sheryl's, one of her last media interviews,
she said, "When I'm old and gray,
"I want to be able to look back and say
"that Barney, in his own small way,
"made a positive difference in our world."
And I think Sheryl can look back and be proud
of what she did, proud of what she built.
She gave everything to Barney and it paid off.
But all that success came at a price.
In 1998, she departs the show.
Also in 1998, she separates from Jim.
And you know, eventually their divorce
was finalized in 2001.
- [Man] One, two!
- [All] Barney!
- Everybody that worked on that show is remarkably human.
We've all been hurt.
We've all had tough times.
We've had divorces, we had people who died
under circumstances that just broke us.
It wasn't all raindrops and lollipops and all that.
But it was true that we all loved each other.
- [All] Barney, Barney, Barney, Barney, Barney, Barney!
- Sheryl Leach created this beautiful world,
this safe space for the cast and crew.
But the people that made the show
had to live in the real world, too,
and that included the Barney kids.
One by one, they all grew up and had to venture
into the real world on their own
and they discovered it was a much harder world
than Barney's world.
(gentle guitar music)
- I think I was around 13 by the time
that I finished with the show.
My first full year back in school,
I was a freshman in high school.
I remember feeling excited to go back.
I just wanted to be a normal kid,
do all the things like everyone else was.
- I was excited to get to go back with my friends
that I'd had forever, and also kind of have
this Barney experience with me,
but it was not well received.
(kids laughing and taunting)
- There was always those people
that were kind of the Barney haters.
There were people that would, you know,
obviously call me the Barney girl and they would sing,
I hate you, you know.
- Kids would call me, you know, Barney lover
and they would come up to me and say,
Barney must have molested us or something.
I'd get that all the time. All the time.
And it really was painful given my history
of actually going through that.
It just, it stung.
- I didn't wanna be known as the Barney girl
that was like, a goody two shoes.
So instead, I took to bad habits.
If you wanted to have a drink,
yeah, I will have a drink with you or smoke.
I will do that with you, too.
I'd rather be known for that.
- I did turn to drugs and alcohol, you know,
to cope, to deal.
I did, you know, wear black clothes
and black lipstick and called myself Black Death,
you know, because I was like, anti was not Barney.
But honestly, at the core of me, I am all those things.
I am sweet, I am compassionate, and I'm very loving.
But it was hard. I felt the need to prove myself.
- When I left Barney, the streets was calling.
They were calling me, and I answered the phone.
You know.
I was doing some of the wrong things in life,
you know, and hanging around the wrong crowds
and drugs and things of that nature,
and it got a little rough.
It got real rough.
November 13th, 2004, I was with a guy that I knew
or thought I knew, and he had pulled a gun out on me
and told me, give me everything.
And at that point, I just didn't know what to do.
I jumped out of the car and then
that's when he shot me in the spine and paralyzed.
Doctors say, you'll never walk again.
It was a tough full year of rehabilitation.
I just had faith and believed I was gonna walk
and I started doing it, and it was a miracle.
I had to realize the things that I was doing at that time
in my early 20s was not right.
And I was punished because I know I was raised right.
Doing the right things, being great, love,
and a lot of it goes back to Barney.
And that's it, period.
- [Interviewer] So what do you know about Patrick Leach?
- I don't really know much about Patrick Leach.
I heard some rumors that he was having a hard time.
I was bullied, you know, for being on the show,
so I can only imagine what Patrick went through.
- Your son, who was how old at the time Barney was created?
- He was two.
- Well, now he's 16 and it is the bane of his existence,
isn't it? That his mom came up with Barney.
- He's a normal 16-year-old.
Do his friends tease him about that?
- They do. Unfortunately, they do.
- I didn't realize, and I guess this is just
pretty shortsighted on my part,
that even he would be impacted by Barney
and his association to it.
- Naturally enough, everybody thinks that kind of fame
and money and all of the celebrity and excitement
that goes with it would be great.
That's what everybody wants.
But it's a two-sided coin.
It can be very rough and very rough on a family dynamic.
After Sheryl left the show and got divorced,
she and Patrick spent a lot of time in Turks & Caicos
in the Caribbean.
- And while there, Sheryl opened a restaurant.
Patrick helped out in that restaurant for a while before,
at some point moving back to the states to live in Malibu.
- [Interviewer] Do you know what happened in Malibu?
- Yeah.
I don't know if you were talking about that or not,
- [Man] Michael, you good?
(indistinct)
Two cameras, A-B mark.
- My name is Charles Mittelstadt,
and I'm a criminal defense investigator.
Barney was responsible for entertaining my kids
when they were younger, and then later,
I came to know Barney in the form of
the association to a client of mine.
- Barney the Purple Dinosaur may love everyone,
but apparently not everyone associated with Barney
shares that philosophy.
Patrick Leach, whose mother Sheryl
created the PBS character, has been arrested
for shooting his Malibu neighbor with a 45.
- My name is Brenda Lee.
I'm a deputy district attorney
with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
When I initially heard about the case,
I wondered what led the son of the creator
of somebody who's supposed to be all love and non-violence
would lead this person to shoot his neighbor.
- At this point, Patrick is 27,
living in Malibu with his fiance and two kids.
Next door to Patrick's mansion is a more modest house
where a guy by the name of Eric Shanks lives
with his elderly mother.
Patrick and Eric had a few disagreements in the past.
- The morning of January 9th, 2013,
Eric Shanks, he was walking up the driveway
toward his own home.
He passed Patrick Leach's house.
There was a sign there in front of the gate
that said no trespassing, and there was a camera there.
So Eric Shanks walked over, took a closer look,
turned around and walked up the hill to his house.
Patrick Leach, apparently he had seen this interaction
through his security cameras.
So Patrick Leach drove off the driveway
to the Shanks residence
and they started screaming at each other.
Patrick Leach saying, you came onto my property,
stop trespassing.
Eric Shanks saying, you're on my property now.
Ultimately, Eric Shanks turned around
to go back to his house and when he looked back,
Patrick Leach had a gun pointed at him.
Eric Shanks then said, "A gun. Really?
"Are you going to shoot me?"
And before he could even finish that sentence,
he testified that Patrick Leach started shooting.
- The victim was shot in the chest
and the bullet went through his chest and out his shoulder.
He's lucky to be alive.
- [Man] Five shots, doesn't sound like
anything else but gunshots.
- [Reporter] This witness who wishes to remain anonymous,
helped save the life of a 49-year-old man
he found bleeding out in the driveway.
- In the meantime, Patrick Leach was speeding down
Pacific Coast Highway.
(sirens blaring) (helicopter whirring)
They pulled him out of the car and found
a loaded handgun and a rifle,
and he was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his jacket.
- [Interviewer] What does that say to you?
- It says to me that he went to the Shanks household
that morning prepared.
He was ready for a shootout.
Patrick Leach was now facing life in prison
for attempted murder.
- How do you explain the conduct?
Human nature is such that whenever we feel threatened,
perceived or real, we are, we resort to things
that sometimes can be very sort of animalistic.
- There had been a couple of interactions
between the Leach and the Shanks family before January 9th,
and they weren't that pleasant.
- Eric Shanks would come outside, then yell things.
And Patrick's perception was that Eric Shanks
represented a real threat to him and his family.
- If you feel as though you or your family is threatened,
you would probably go over there,
knock on the door and have a conversation
or even an argument maybe,
but that's not what Patrick Leach did.
He took it to another level.
My impression of Patrick Leach is that he was paranoid
and very tightly wound.
- I don't recall exactly when or how I heard
about the shooting incident, but it just, it hit me so hard.
- And...
- You know, you remember this like, bright-eyed little boy
who was just nothing but precious,
and I wonder what happened.
- [Interviewer] Do you think that when Sheryl
created Barney, she unknowingly
created a problem for her son?
- You know, I don't know.
I mean, I think that the fact that she created Barney
probably gave them a lot, financially.
I think he could afford things and travel
and do things that he wouldn't have been able to do
had they not done Barney.
But there's good and bad with everything.
- Being a rich kid, that's a tough factor.
It's not a great gift to have access to too much money.
You know, it can kill initiative,
your sense of accomplishment, your self worth.
- So, probably, yeah, I think that there was
some negative as well.
- I think Patrick had a lot to contend with in life.
A lot of challenges.
Some were medical issues.
He had had some brain surgery.
I knew Patrick was troubled.
- When I heard the whole situation with Patrick
and the Malibu incident, I wasn't surprised.
I could understand, knowing what happened with his dad.
- So this is from the application for
the commutation of Patrick's sentence.
Mr. Leach faced significant challenge as a child
and during early adulthood.
When he was young, his mother was busy building
a successful career and his father
struggled with depression.
Mr. Leach's parents separated when he was 14 years old
and divorced three years later.
During that time, Mr. Leach developed a brain tumor,
benign, that was surgically removed.
When Mr. Leach was 18 years old,
his father committed suicide.
- I was in Mexico City for a state show tour
when we got the call that Jim Leach had committed suicide.
And that was just devastating.
Talk about your heart going out to both Sheryl and Patrick.
It was beyond what anybody could ever think would happen.
You know, for a child that was raised
with basically anything he ever wanted,
but there were a lot of hidden dark paths that followed him.
- By his own admission, he became essentially
almost addicted to marijuana,
to where it was a coping mechanism
as a way to numb his emotions
and not have to deal with the realities of life.
It sort of amped up his anxiety and it amped up
his paranoia to the extent that when he was confronted
with someone that he considered to be threatening
and to be very aggressive, it distorted his reality
and his ability to deal with it in a logical way.
- Sounds like he had a hard time growing up.
It explains his behavior,
but I wouldn't say it justifies his behavior.
- [Interviewer] Why do you think Sheryl Leach
would not want to participate in this documentary?
- I think that Sheryl would never,
I think Sheryl would talk all day long to you about Barney,
but I don't think she wants to talk about
the relationship between Barney and Patrick.
- I felt so bad for her because she,
she meant so much to me and to a lot of people.
You know, the phrase "every mother's nightmare"
comes to mind.
- Patrick Leach ultimately pled no contest
to assault with a deadly weapon.
On July 1st, 2015, he was sentenced
to state prison for 15 years,
and ultimately the governor commuted his sentence
and Patrick Leach got out in five years.
- To like, paraphrase Bryan Stevenson, it's like,
each of us is more than the worst things
that we've ever done, right.
Like, who we are on our worst day
has a whole story which precedes it
and that if we are given the opportunity,
there is a whole story that comes after that day.
- Patrick, this child who was really the inspiration
for Barney, for a character that spreads love,
spreads joy, spreads kindness and peace,
he went against everything that his mother
tried to teach the world.
And I think that is tragic.
- So yeah, the question is, why can't the lessons of Barney
translate into the adult world?
Why can't we do that?
- These messages for children,
when we hear them again as adults,
I do think they hit sometimes in a place of cynicism.
I love you, you're into me,
everyone's cool, we're a happy family.
You know, when you're 30, you know,
not everyone has found that to be true.
- Let me do it.
(indistinct) (laughing)
- I'm Shannon Foley Martinez.
I'm a former neo-Nazi white supremacist
who now works to help people leave those spaces
and to build prevention models so that
people never end up there in the first place.
Obviously, I'm not saying that people who hate
a children's television character are in any way
the same thing as, you know,
someone who embraced the things that I embraced.
However, the dynamics of basing your identity
around what you hate and what you despise,
that those dynamics are exactly the same.
This is the process of what allows you
to dehumanize other people.
I think as a culture, like,
we really value provocative behavior
and on the internet, the more outrageous the content,
the more likely we are to respond to it.
And therefore, the more money that internet, you know,
providers and platforms can make off of us,
the more data they can mine and the more data they can mine,
the more money they can make off of it
and create this experience of where we spend
more and more and more time in tighter and tighter
echo chambers where our world views are completely upheld.
But there is a cost, in my opinion,
to being someone who identifies by what they hate.
(video game blasting)
You limit your ability to be moved,
to engage with the world about what you love.
- I was never like, big into hating Barney as a person.
I thought he was annoying, sure,
but like everybody thought he was annoying.
But I was captivated by the Jihad to Destroy Barney
on the worldwide web.
Something that I've always had trouble with is that,
you know, the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Dinosaur
sort of sits at a point where we are in the crossroads
of both the good and the bad of the internet.
(keyboard clacking)
And you can't draw a direct line,
but there is definitely an evolutionary chain
between the Jihad to Destroy Barney
and things like 4chan and QAnon.
We helped perpetuate that sort of nonsense
and helped normalize that sort of nonsense, in a way.
- To me, it's not that big of a leap
from basing my identity around, you know,
hating Barney as it is to hating Democrats or Republicans
or northerners or southerners.
Those are not two profoundly different things.
- It's sad because one thing that I think Barney
teaches everyone, we might be different.
We might be different races.
- Face me! (crowd yelling)
- We might come from different backgrounds,
but we're all here together.
We're all in it together.
(crowd cheering and shouting)
- Turn on the news and every day,
every single day, you'll see human beings
just being cruel to other human beings.
- They wanted her to kill herself.
They got what they wanted.
- And now it's like, everyone has a platform
to just say the ugliest things they want.
- There was a persistent rumor for a really long time
that I was dead.
After a certain point, you start to wonder, you know,
is this a cultural preference?
You know, it starts to feel really bad.
You know, what, why won't this rumor go away?
Was this what people would prefer?
You start to take it quite personally after a while.
- People like, take joy in entertainment
and they also take joy in making fun of it.
But what people don't always realize is the effects
that can have on the people making it.
You see that with somebody like Jake Lloyd,
who is the little blonde kid, the star of the Phantom Menace
who was blamed for destroying the Star Wars franchise.
That, you know, people like were upset about that movie
and he became the focus of that.
Then all of a sudden, you know,
like, he is this figure of mockery and that,
you know, messes him up.
- [Interviewer] Was there a Barney curse?
- I wouldn't necessarily say that.
- I hate him. I hate him with a passion.
- Die, you Commie (bleep).
(gunshot ringing)
- [Woman] Barney is the bane of my existence.
- It's like no one learned the lessons
that Barney was trying to teach,
is just that to love each other, to share,
to be kind, you know.
- I love you, Barney.
- We love you, too. (giggling)
- We just couldn't let the love in.
The problem was us.
- [Man] Two cameras, A-B four.
(slide clacking)
- [Interviewer] What were you saying, Rob?
- I was saying that, you know,
I thought I had shed all of these, you know,
Barney nightmares from, you know,
years and years of exposure.
And now I have to deal with all this PTSD right now,
and it's taken its toll.
The I Hate Barney Secret Society is here
to help the families that have Barney addicts.
That's what we're all about.
(crowd booing)
- I'll bet you have an addiction.
I bet you love to watch your sports,
and I wonder how many things that you are addicted to.
- All of these themes that I had in the
I Hate Barney Secret Society,
these were the same issues that I had to face
in my alcoholism and in my recovery.
What we've really got is like a seven step support group
for families that have Barney addicts.
You know, I said a Barney addict controls the supply.
You know, I was having problems
with protecting my supply of alcohol.
You know, I was losing, you know,
control of what was going on in my own life.
Barney gave me something to shoot for and trying to,
you know, satirize Barney, I was also trying to,
you know, satirize myself.
I've been in recovery from alcoholism for,
I don't know, probably 30 years now.
You know, Barney allowed me to address
my own character defects.
You know, I'm grateful for what Barney did for me.
- In a way, Barney was a mirror and is a mirror
on each person who views it and who has an opinion on it.
And I think because this overt showing of affection,
that ended up being kind of threatening
to some people because, probably because
they had never had that in their lives
and they didn't understand it.
- People couldn't accept that this was just a show
that talked about nice things and nice emotions
and love and caring.
- Barney was never arguing
that the world is a perfect place.
He was arguing that it can be a better place
if we all try to make it a better place.
- One of the cool parallels between, say,
Barney and Mr. Rogers, is that as a child watching,
here you have an adult who is like, just your friend.
Somebody who like, takes the time to look into your eyes
and talk with you and ask you questions,
and it feels like a conversation, like a relationship.
- I think, you know, when you have this relationship
with a character and especially when
it's in a formative time,
there's gonna be nostalgia around that relationship.
- Can you imagine how comforting it feels?
How it feels to be seen and heard
when you're just a little kid
because somebody wants to take the time to talk with you
about your feelings or how you're thinking about things
or to make a joke with you.
That's pretty cool.
- I mean, no matter how you look at it,
Barney was enormously important
to a lot of peoples' early lives.
And I think we all grow up
having a special character that we love, right.
I think we all have a Barney.
Like you, right.
So, who was your Barney growing up?
- Who was my Barney growing up?
I had Barbies, is who was mine.
- Oh, oh, probably my Barney growing up
was probably Mr. Rogers.
- I liked Sesame Street.
So I was really into Bert and Ernie.
- I just, I spent a lot of time as a kid watching,
watching Big Bird and The Count.
(chuckling like The Count)
One, two.
- I guess Kermit.
I like Kermit the Frog. He's cool.
He's so cool.
- Mr. Wizard was my guy.
- For me, it was my little Teddy bear
that kind of got me through,
through the hard times.
- Even today, you know, I still relate to Barney
and the messages that he shares to the world.
- Yeah.
Mine was Grover.
I loved Grover. He was my favorite.
Now imagine that character, imagine a frat party
just full of people hating that character.
I mean, that's like painful, right?
That kind of hurts.
And the things that we love as kids,
to the degree that I understand it, like,
that approaches like, sacred stuff, you know.
And not that you have to love Barney
because other people did,
but I think that it's worth respect.
I do.
- I think there's so much hate right now.
There's just way too much hate.
We need Barney now.
But, you know, we don't live
in Barney's world, unfortunately.
- Anybody who objects to inclusiveness and love,
they need more understanding.
They need a hug.
(TV static) (bright guitar music)