The Wrath of Barney the Big Purple Dinosaur by William Hrdina

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Nobody knew it, but in those 30 seconds a 20 year old plot was brought to fruition. Every aspect of the event was managed and carefully chosen, from how the brainwashing was accomplished, to the exact day and time of Barney's interruption.
Even though the pirate transmission was played on every television station in prime time on a Thursday night, the number of people who saw the initial broadcast was fairly small. Maybe 30% of the target audience had their deeply buried programming activated. This was quite a large number, but nowhere near the amount of people needed for a successful mission. However, never underestimate the media's ability to overplay a story to the point of nausea.
In this, the media unknowingly fell directly into the planner's trap.
The interruption became a national media obsession. The 30 second clip was played over and over again on the news, on the internet, and even on the radio. Within three weeks the punk metal band "The Evildrome Boozerama" recorded a version of Barney's "Kill your entire family" that rocketed to the top of the pop charts and was still number one when the revolution came.
When an enterprising and curious filmmaker examined a raw tape of the Barney broadcast, he discovered the odd flashing between the repeated segments was actually a simple subliminal message.
"The Eagle has landed."
The discovery of the subliminal message only increased the public's interest in the segment, and in the course of the three weeks the Barney Broadcast (as it was dubbed by CNN) was a saturation level story, there was scarcely a person in America who didn't see it and form an opinion of it one way or the other.
The academicians called it, "The most agile deconstruction of the pseudo fascistic tendencies of neo-Spockian childhood aesthetics since Barbara Manalope burned the Elmo doll on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial."
Fox news called it, "A childish, un-American act of terrorism."
The Village Voice declared, "That was a hoot!"
The Barney Broadcast was one of those things everyone was able to have feelings about one way or another. Not just regular feelings, but passionate, committed feelings that made no sense and had no relationship whatsoever to logic- like arguing over favorite football teams or which Olsen twin is hotter.
A few web sites popped up trying to warn people the entire thing wasn't necessarily a prank, but they were summarily ignored- or in a tragic slice of irony- treated as a prank. I've heard a rumor that the entire plan, from soup to nuts, was on the internet for 2 weeks before people affiliated with the revolution took it down.
When I heard the story, I took it to be a joke.
Only it wasn't.
The "movement," as the Barnarians came to call their takeover of America, happened so quickly, and with such ferocious speed, barely anyone even lifted a finger to stop them.
This is what we know for sure:
Barney was initially invented by a teacher in 1987.
The subliminal audio technique used to brainwash the children was developed at MIT in the mid 80's for the Pentagon under the program name EARSCREW.
At some point in 1989 the Fathers rented a video of the still un-syndicated Barney show and the plot was born.
With seed money and contacts from the Fathers, Barney first aired in April 1992.