The real Barney

Matt: Who's in that Barney suit? What are his or her acting credentials? Royal Shakespeare company? The Actors Studio? — Master Thespian, San Diego

The New York School of Mime and Aggravation, maybe. Barney is an example of Matthew Alice Fact of Life No. 12, which says nothing is as simple as it looks, except people who write to Matthew Alice. Amazingly, it takes two people to create the great Barney illusion. Thirty-three-year-old, six-foot-tall David Joyner has been in the dino suit since shortly before the PBS debut in ’92. Before then, Barney was a bear (long story) and Joyner was a model. In a very strange career move, he’s now a model lumbering around in 30 pounds of acrylic. An actor named Bob West does Barney’s voice. Joyner/West are Barney only on TV and stage. Shopping mall Barneys are stand-ins, so he keeps his yap shut at those appearances. In a move that should keep social philosophers thinking for some time, a white supremacist group warned all impressionable Aryan toddlers against watching Barney & Friends because David Joyner is a black man (a distant cousin to Jackie Joyner-Kersee, apparently). Too many “blacks and their ways” in show biz, the knuckleheads say, even when they’re covered in green-and-purple plastic. Go figure.