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You will keep hiring picadors from the back row and pic the bull back far along his spine you will slam sandbags to the kidneys and pass a wine poisoned on the vine you will saw the horns off and murmur the bulls are ah the bulls are not what once they were The corrida will end with Russians in the plaza Swine, some of you will say what did we wrong? And go forth to kiss the conquerors NORMAN MAILER New York City
SEPT. 13, 1963
I myself never called my father a "coward." He often sighs: "To live in peace, cowardice is sometimes necessary." But right or wrong, he is my father, and I never came to calling him names.
Concerning "provocateurs in monks' robes," my term "beat them three times harder" comes from my deep feeling of noblesse oblige. In Viet Nam, the religious, because of the respect due to their state of presumed holiness, cannot indulge as easily as others in wrongs of humanity and must be treated harder if they do.
Concerning the term "monk barbecue show," Viet Nam is a strange country where people often commit spectacular suicides before the gates of people whom they wish to curse. I find that custom barbaric. My aim was to try to stop the spreading of bad examples by ridiculing what I considered grotesque customs. I am stunned to see my well-intended purpose maliciously distorted by ill-intended elements who use my words to fit a false, ugly, obsolete and well-organized anti-Catholic propaganda which tries to present the Vietnamese people as an innocent Buddhist majority under a cruel dictatorship of Catholic minority overwhelmed by a fanatic Inquisition mood symbolized by me.
I have never been against conciliation of the Buddhists. I am only against one-way conciliation. If sometimes I have to step in the fray, becoming a target of most cruel blows, it is not at all by natural taste, but because someone must finally make up his mind to take a position, dangerous, maybe, but necessary to break the paralyzing fear of others. What else can I do when I feel responsible for half of the population which I have done so much to liberate? Because of my utmost sincerity, I think that if I show some awkwardness, I need understanding rather than insults, which too many sectors of the American press are pouring on me with glee. MADAME NGO DINH NHU Saigon
MAY 21, 1965
As an anti-American, I thank you for your rotten article devoted to my person. Your insult to a head of state and your odious lies dishonor not only your magazine but also your nation...
I assure you that I would much prefer to die from the blows of the Communists (who are certainly hostile to royalty, but who have no contempt for us) than capitulate before you, who symbolize the worst in humanity, i.e., racism, discrimination, injustice, death and lies. NORODOM SIHANOUK Chief of State Pnompenh, Cambodia
APRIL 1, 1966