Joseph Heller. "The Loyalty Oath Crusade"

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The captain called it "The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade" and, as he told his squadron, people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. So every enlisted man was required to sing the Star-Spangled Banner before using the ketchup in the mess hall, and each crew member had to sign an oath before picking up his parachute. The entire camp snarled into a knot of pledging and singing soldiers, and bombing missions were delayed for hours. The Loyalty Oath Crusade was fiction, in the novel Catch 22 created nearly 40 years ago by one of America’s great masters of the absurd. But as Joseph Heller says in this program with Bill Moyers, sometimes you can’t tell the difference between absurdity and politics. For nearly 40 years, the man who made "Catch-22" part of our language has been tracing that often-elusive line. (30 minutes)