Word: mandarins
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...some, Ngo Dinh Can seemed to be the ablest of the ill-fated Ngo brothers. Although he never held an official position in the Diem regime, he was the overlord of central Viet Nam. A rural Rasputin in high-collared mandarin robes who wenched and swindled lustily, he nevertheless ran his fief so effectively that it had less trouble from the Viet Cong than any other area. Can in vain advised his brothers, President Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, to ease the measures against the Buddhists-not out of idealism but to avoid rocking the boat...
...song phrase to a growling halt, or let it drift lyrically like a ribbon of smoke. Her lyrics seem not to have been learned by rote, but branded on her heart, and when she sings or dances, some elemental beat of energy and joy sends riffs through her long mandarin fingers, her rocking pelvis, and restless toes...
...seemingly doomed situation stepped a scholarly, introverted and humorless man of 53, whose major qualification for the job was that he was one of the few South Viet Nam leaders who had not already failed. A convinced nationalist and an intense Roman Catholic, Ngo Dinh Diem came from a mandarin family long accustomed to rule. Diem himself nearly became a priest but decided against it because, says his brother, Archbishop Thuc, "the church was too worldly...
Magnified Pride. Diem's virtues of honesty, courage and bone-deep anti-Communism remained. But his faults-stubbornness, nepotism, suspicion, a mandarin pride-became magnified. Once his mind was made up, Diem would not budge. His meetings with foreign officials degenerated into monologues-one Western ambassador estimated that he had been able to speak only 500 words in a four-hour interview with Diem...
...much that his regime was repressive, but that it had lost its ability to command the nation. By the unhappy standards of the mid-20th century world, Diem's treatment of the Buddhists may not have been spectacularly cruel, but it was thoughtlessly clumsy. The mandarin in the palace somehow seemed to have lost touch with reality-a reality that included the Buddhist self-immolations, perhaps the grisliest of history's propaganda gestures...