Book Notes: Left For Dead On Ant Hills, And Hot Bottoms

Former state Sen. Jackie Speier, who lost her bid for lieutenant governor last year, has written a section of a new self-fulfillment book with a really long title: "This Is Not the Life I Ordered: 50 Ways to Keep Your Head Above Water When Life Keeps Dragging You Down."

Speier's horrific story is about keeping your head above an ant hill, actually. In 1978, Speier was legal counsel to Rep. Leo Ryan when they both traveled to Guyana to investigate reports that some members of the Peoples Temple cult were being held against their will. After a fairly uneventful trip, the delegation was attacked by gunmen on the Port Kaituma airstrip. Ryan was assassinated. This is the account Speier, who was badly injured in the ambush, gave to The Times:

"When I was taken to the grassy knoll, I was placed on top of an ant hill. There were ants crawling all over my face and body. There were natives who kept coming over, obviously shocked by my wounds, making these sounds, obviously horrified. They did not know first aid, so they couldn't help. I was still pretty frightened. We thought the gunmen would come back and finish us off." She said her worst fear was having to "go through a second death."

Later, she would say: "It was the pandemonium, the blood, the death, the ability of people to have so little respect for life." Speier spent two months in the hospital and underwent 10 surgeries. Physicians, she told The Times in 1986, decided not to remove bullets lodged in her chest and pelvis because they believed that to do so "would almost be more traumatic."

The book is set for release by Conari Press.

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The Political Stunt That Won't Disappear

Far be it for Political Muscle to make fun of other people's typos. We've had our share. But a reader noticed an unfortunate mistake in an invitation to a Bruce Herschensohn book party taking place at Book Soup West Hollywood this Thursday. The "foreign policy expert and former presidential advisor" would be:

"Hot-bottom." Get it? Herschensohn, you may remember, became the victim of Democratic Party operative Bob Mulholland during the 1992 Senate race against Barbara Boxer. Mulholland confronted Herschensohn at a news conference a week before the election, and said:

"How can you ask the voters of California to elect you when you're out preaching religious values and family values, and you go to places where women dance totally nude?"

Mulholland then gave reporters the name of the strip club, and of a news stand where Herschensohn reportedly bought X-rated magazines. Since then, Herschensohn has become something of a martyr to the California Republican Party--proof of the mendacity of Democratic operatives such as Mulholland, who says he simply wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of another family values politician.