“Conversation” Update

After my go-around earlier this week with Heather Martens – where she seemed to challenge the Twin Cities media to hold the Gun Rights movement’s factual feet in the fire – and my attempt to send a letter to the Strib accepting that challenge, I figured it’d be fair to try to actually have that “conversation about guns” with Ms. Martens.

Y’know – to let her win that cataclysmic victory of fact over superstition that she seems to think the media will conjure up when questioning the Second Amendment movement.

So I called “Protect MN’s” phone number – and got through to Heather Martens. For the first time.

And I invited her to appear on the Northern Alliance with me on Saturday. Or next Saturday. Or any Saturday – live in studio, or via phone. Or if Saturdays don’t work, we could record an interview in studio or via phone any time, 24/7, at her convenience. Or, for that matter, I could come out to wherever she wanted to meet and tape an interview.

She said she’d get back to me.

Which, to be fair, she did, in about 15 minutes, via email, saying she’d be happy to do the show…

…for a $1,500 fee.

Of course, we don’t pay for interviews. Nobody does. Presumably Martens knows that asking a fee for an interview is a polite-yet-condescending way to say “F**k you” to an interview request – as well, in Martens case, as an admission that she doesn’t pack the gear to a point anywhere but an echo chamber where the media is painting her toenails.

The truth remains:

I invite any significant Twin Cities gun control activist to appear on my program, at a time of their choice.
I challenge any Minnesota gun control activist, “gun safety” leader or lobbyist, or anti-gun politician to a public debate, on neutral turf, with an audience, with mutuall-agreed rules. I keep challenging them; their continued avoidance simply means none of them is up to defending the indefensible.
Heather Martens has never, not once, said or written a single, substantial, factual thing about the gun issue.

This isn’t over.

Posted

October 22, 2015

Big Gun Control

Mitch Berg

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Comments

15 responses to ““Conversation” Update”

rudytbone

October 22, 2015

Mitch, for God’s sake, pay it! Get her on the air! With the provision that for each provable lie she utters; each incorrect and misleading statistic she cites costs her $100 to the charity of your choice.

I’m sure your station would be willing to kick in for that.
Yossarian

October 22, 2015

So, if she’ll do your show for $1,500, how much does the Strib pay her for each and every interview they do with her, and op-ed she writes?

I mean, holy crap. I give her credit for having exceptionally large testicles to even posit such a request.
Rikkor

October 22, 2015

I’ll bet your readership will cover most of it. If you take a collection, I am in.
Scott Hughes

October 22, 2015

“Of course, we don’t pay for interviews. Nobody does.”

If it didn’t set a precedent I’d chip in a few bucks to get her to put up. Cowards that her kind are she’d probably wouldn’t show.
Hillary’sClotFilledCankles

October 22, 2015

I think it would appropriate to write a letter to the Strib editor relating the details of this exchange.
Night Writer

October 22, 2015

Skip the Strib editorial board and go straight to Glen Taylor.
Seflores

October 22, 2015

Oh my. So if she requires a $1,500 fee for an interview, it begs the question what area media have been paying if at all. Maybe it’s time to head into the way back machine to determine who has interviewed her. Then ask if they paid the full $1,500 or got a rate or even got an interview gratis. I’m no Joe Doakes or even a Learned Foot but it seems like a restraint of trade issue. Although she could argue that her views are worthless so buyer beware. Curious.
mnbubba

October 22, 2015

I am TOTALLY in on the whip-round.
Prussian Blue

October 22, 2015

The $1500 dollar fee was intended to act as barrier. If you were to offer her the money, she would come up with further demands. As it is, you can claim, truthfully, that you offered her free air time on your show to explain her position to your radio audience, and her response was to demand that you pay her $1500 for the privilege.
I’ve read her piece in the Strib. It is difficult to see how a real debate could occur. There is nothing interesting about people shouting contradictory statistics at each other. I notice the 2nd amendment didn’t make an appearance in her opinion piece, and of course that blows the comparison with other public health issues out of the water. All they have to do is repeal the 2nd amendment. If you can’t repeal or replace the 2nd amendment, then where is this super majority that wants to repeal or replace the 2nd amendment? No one on their side is even talking about it.
The Strib is hopeless. It has no obligation to do anything. As far as I can tell, it has no mission statement that you can make an appeal to. The Strib seems to consider itself a media company more than a regional newspaper these days.
Mr. D

October 23, 2015

A variation on the old joke, variously attributed to Groucho Marx, Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook:

Would you “appear on the radio” for $1500?
Yes.
Would you appear on the radio for $5?
What kind of “radio interviewee” do you think I am?
We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
Night Writer

October 23, 2015

Can you get any recordings of her public statements she’s made on the local airwaves? Since she’s always parroting the same things you could string those together for her half of the “debate”.
Mitch Berg

October 23, 2015

NW,

I should do that. Good idea. Thanks.
I Heard It On The NARN | Shot in the Dark

October 24, 2015

[…] Summing up Heather Martens’ (and KARE11’s) disingenuity. […]
Update | Shot in the Dark

October 26, 2015

[…] – leader of “Gun Safety” group “Protect” MN, and serial liar – demanded $1,500 to discuss “gun safety” on my show, with me, someone with at least some track record of knowing the issue in some […]
Curiosity | Shot in the Dark

November 10, 2015

[…] that the KARE bears didn’t pay $1,500 for the pleasure of Martens’ presence; she had demanded that amount to have a “conversation about guns” on the […]