The Great Singing Nyala live in the mountains of Ethiopia, where they travel in pairs, munch on wild grasses, and never tire of explaining that they’re not really related to the Not So Giant Nyala of South Africa (which can barely hold a tune), but more closely related to the Kudu and other antelope.

Their scientific name comes from their unusual natural defense instincts.  When startled, they freeze, then do a charming song-and-dance number, complete with a little soft-shoe thing on their hind trotters.  The duo below were photographed just before bursting into song.

Usually, the lyrics go something like this:

I gotta get to East Africa one of these days.  (Actually, between everything else, I’m spending some spare time writing questions for a quiz show in Tanzania that a Trebekistan buddy works on.  Would love to see a taping.  So, you never know.)

Now that the inevitable crackdown has begun, with Buddhist monks being rounded up and protesters shot in the streets, if you’d like to follow what’s happening in Burma a little more closely — even after the next American celebrity gets in trouble with the law — bookmark Burma Digest.

 

I’m not expecting many reviews of Who Hates Whom, since it’s just a small impulse-buy paperback, but I’ve just learned the New York Observer will have a kind review in Monday’s issue. Here’s a chunk:

Bob Harris is a brave man. Armed only with his irreverent sense of humor, boldly declaring his lack of expertise, he charges into the thick of the globe’s myriad simmering wars, coolly cataloguing the gripes of each antagonistic sect and faction. The result, Who Hates Whom—Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide (Three Rivers Press, $11.95), is hilariously relaxed about all the hate out there. See, for example, his remarks on the 2006 Tehran conference on the Holocaust: “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited the world’s leading crackpots for a shindig of wrongitude…"

For the record, that first sentence makes me uncomfortable, but I’m including it so I can also make the following point:

I am most assuredly not brave, and neither is Who Hates Whom. Not even close. Like way so very not.

Bravery would be writing a book like Who Hates Whom in about two-thirds of the countries it mentions.

As you’ve probably already heard, about 100,000 of our fellow humans marched in peaceful opposition to a brutal regime yesterday, led by maybe 1000 Buddhist monks in full-on saffron gear waving six-color religious flags.

Burma may seem far away, but it’s not. Significant oil reserves, for example. Changes here, if nothing else, could affect how much you pay at the gas pump down the road. Also, it’s ruled by a thuggish dictatorship opposed by most of its own population, and we all care about that on principle, right? So, big story. Theoretically.

Obviously, we’ll root for the guys in burnt sienna togs holding pics of the Nobel Peace laureate, but nobody knows what happens next.

Thing is, for those relying only on TV news, nobody knows what already happened, either.

Out of curiosity, tonight I taped an hour each of two of CNN’s signature shows — the "Situation Room" (where the main situation usually seems to be Wolf Blitzer needing to speak in headlines! every third word!) and "Prime News with Erica Hill" on CNN’s Headline News channel. So just how much airtime did an unprecedented march against one of the world’s most despicable governments get?

Prime News with Erica Hill: zero minutes and zero seconds.

To anyone mistakenly relying on this program, the vast protest in Burma simply didn’t happen. Although there was time to mention Mike Tyson’s latest arrest, possible criminal charges against Britney Spears, a tapestry in Florida that kinda looks like the Virgin Mary, and — I kid you not — an extended discussion entitled "Does God Watch Sports?" Speaks for itself.

The Situation Room with Howlin’ Wolf: one minute, fifty-two seconds, total, including a pre-commercial tease.

After a half-hour of designated-enemy baiting (Ahmadinejad’s impotent idiocy contrasted with the speaking styles of Castro, Chavez, and Khruschev) and pointless yet heavily-hyped chat with Donald Trump (why? because he’s so terribly hard to find on TV?) — and only after reporting on a new study finding that (quoting CNN’s graphic) "Too Much, Not Enough Sleep Can Kill You" — one brief report on Burma, almost completely devoid of history or context.

Wolf tossed to a young lady named Abbi standing at a big TV showing a QuickTime movie downloaded from the internet, which she proceeded to point at, confirming that these were indeed monks in "MEE-ann-mar," and this was footage from the internet, and the Burmese government doesn’t like it. Back to you, Wolf!

(Think I’m exaggerating? Read the transcript.)

So. Aren’t you still a little curious about why tens of thousands of Burmese might join this monk-led protest? Or just how oppressive the Burmese government might be? Who exactly is this Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, now in her twelfth year of house arrest? And how is she descended from a key luminary in Burma’s independence struggle, and therefore inseparable with national identity for many democracy activists? Why is it called Myanmar by some people and Burma by others? What’s the difference? Where the hell is Burma, anyway, and why did the British and Japanese fight over it? What about the influence of China, and its oil companies, and those of other countries? Is it still a big source of opium? And what’s the deal with boycotting teak? Are we still supposed to do that?

That’s all in the Burma essay in Who Hates Whom. And it’s only five pages long. Including a map showing roughly where the major oil pipelines and opium producers are.

Who Hates Whom exists because today’s pattern was no exception. It’ll be repeated elsewhere tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. The sad reality: TV news shows generally are not there to deliver you information that you can use — they exist to deliver you… to the advertisers. You’re the product being bought and sold. And the most efficient way to do that is to inflame, to excite, to bring back recurring characters (Donald Trump, coming up next!), good guys and bad guys. It’s a news show, involving actual news, to about the same extent that Cheez Whiz involves actual cheese.

(If you need further proof, why else would a perfectly intelligent CNN anchor bother to conduct a lengthy segment rambling on about whether or not an unknowable infinite invisible deity is personally invested in televised sports, for f*** sake? It sure as hell ain’t for the news value.)

So last year, I was in my editor’s office, and we were bouncing around ideas for my next book. Not intending to pitch this, actually, I made one offhand comment about how it would be cool if there were a little guidebook, called, I dunno, Who Hates Whom or something, detailing most of the major conflicts in the world with little maps and photos and short essays, all crunched down short enough that you could bone up on Iran or Sudan in one trip to the can. Next time tens of thousands of people are pouring into the streets, or something blows up somewhere and you’re, y’know, a little curious what the hell is going on, and you’d like something that doesn’t involve Britney Spears being shot by Phil Spector, this book would be handy.

A year later, Who Hates Whom hits bookstores today. It ain’t perfect, mind you — wars are high-flux situations, books require months of lead time, and I’m neither infallible nor a real expert on anything — but it’s the best I could squeeze together, small enough to fit in your jacket pocket.

Meanwhile, let’s just hope that the Burma chapter in some future edition will have a very happy update. Instead of the messier one that the government decided on last time.

I am so happy and proud to know this guy.

My good Trebekistan buddy David Madden, holder of the second-longest consecutive-game win streak in the history of Jeopardy!, is hiking the entire east coast of the U.S. — from Edmundston, New Brunswick just over the Canadian border all the way to Key West — while raising money for Fisher House, which provides temporary hospital-adjacent housing for families of wounded soldiers.

When I tell you over and over that Trebekistan is filled with incredibly cool people, this is what I mean.

And whatever you think of the war — and David and I think along pretty similar lines — there are now thousands of fellow Americans who were put in harm’s way as a result, and they and their families have to pull together now and find a way to get through it. This is a pretty amazing (for David) and easy (for us) way to help.

He’s got a blog up and running now, plus a couple of cool photo albums, if you’d like to see what it’s like to walk 3000 miles for charity.

Toss in a penny a mile, and that’s thirty bucks. Or throw in two pennies. Or three. Donations are tax-deductible and Fisher House gets absolutely top ratings from charity watchdogs.

Bright guy, David. Also, and more importantly, good.

Let’s do some good now, too.