155: Hoaxing Yourself (2000)
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Parents, here is all the evidence you need. The TV is bad for kids, especially public TV. When Sean was 14, he loved watching those British TV shows. They're always running on PBS, Masterpiece Theater, Dr. Who. - And then there was this show that I would, that I would stay up really late and watch and tape and watch over and over again the tapes called Dempsey and Make Peace, which was about an American detective who went to London because he had been like set up at home and he was teamed up with a woman who was this aristocrat named Lady Harriet Make Peace. - And I was really on her side. I thought, you know, she's got it going on. - You looked down on the American. - Oh yeah. - What Sean liked about Lady Harriet Make Peace and all the other Brits on TV was their aloofness, how they seemed above it all, how they looked down on Americans. What Sean did also convince there must be something wrong with a nation that produced jocks and bullies who harassed him at school. And sometimes joking around with his friends, he would talk with the British accent. - And then it was just something that spiraled out of control. I know that eventually I was just using an English accent literally from waking to sleeping, morning, noon, and night. - Sean spoke with the British accent from the time he was 14 until he was 16. And at some point his mother took him to see a psychiatrist. - He was just really, he must, I don't know, you know, the different schools of psychology, but he was really very confrontive. And he was like, well, you know, you've got to stop doing this. He said, 'cause you're not British, you know. And my mom, my mom just sort of sat over next to me and she sort of went, yeah, to agree with him and to sort of help him in showing me this. - Sean was furious. He had an impulse to lecture the guy on how, in fact, he was British. And the only problem with that was, A, he knew very well that he was not, and B, his mother was sitting right there. She was sure to contradict him. It all just seemed impossible. 'Cause that's what I was thinking.
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