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Calumny Instead of Courage. The First Lady often treated Diem like Petruchio; she would write down a list of the direst predictions of what would happen if he did not follow her advice and then make him sign it so that she could crow if she were borne out. She also patronized Pope John XXIII. "Poor Pope," she said after John's encyclical Pacem in Terris called for more social welfare. "He pleases everyone with this encyclical. But if something pleases everyone, it can be exploited." She can even take quite a firm line with God. In praying for her projects, she says, she often makes a list of promises; when she has carried them out, she tells God: "I have fulfilled all the conditions," and asks to be helped further.
Mme. Nhu denies that she is antimale. "I have no reason to dislike men," she says. "They have always been so nice to me." She is a born actress, and a gentle rap of her delicate ivory fan has the effect of a roll of kettledrums. At a diplomatic party several years ago, U.S. Admiral Arthur Radford, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, locked his arm around her waist and said: "What do you really want, little lady?"
Considering the little lady's tremendous power, Saigon gossip has inevitably linked her with stories of corruption, but there has never been any supporting evidence. "After those charges," she says, "I predicted that next I would be attacked on my sentimental life." She was right. Saigon's cafes abound with tales of palace dalliances. But even some of her worst enemies dismiss the reports as rumors circulated by people who are afraid to attack her any other way.
The Crab's Claw. The attacks on Mme. Nhu grow more bitter as the Buddhist crisis intensifies, for she has made herself the country's leading anti-Buddhist polemicist. Superficially, the controversy shapes up as a simple religious dispute between the Buddhist majority and the nation's 1,500,000 Catholics. But the struggle transcends the charges of religious persecution and inequality. Instead it has developed into a political conflict that illustrates the gulf between the people, who have no natural affinity for a government that has done little to win their support, and Diem's ruling family. In this situation, the Catholic angle can be greatly exaggerated.
Viet Nam's Buddhists and Catholics have long been enemies. Even today, the Buddhists claim that the Catholics were "the claw that enabled the French crab to occupy Viet Nam." Mme. Nhu says that her own Buddhist ancestors used to butcher Catholics and that, dec ades ago, a Buddhist mob burned most of the Ngo Dinh family alive in a church. But since he took over the government in 1954, Diem has gone to great lengths not to offend the Buddhist majority. Less than one-third of his 17 Cabinet ministers and 19 army generals are Catholics; the heavy percentage of Catholics in the civil service and the 123-seat National Assembly is largely the result of a superior and far-reaching Catholic school system. Whenever there is a whisper of opposition, however, the government treats Catholics like anyone else; two Catholics involved in the 1960 coup were sentenced to long prison terms, and three priests have been jailed or forced to leave the country for criticizing the government.