What Is Wrong with Randy Petersen?

We were sent the following email sent by Randy Petersen, owner of BoardingArea.com, to a Twitter individual, on why his company continues to host the Flying with Fish blog written by Steven Frischling, who was arrested June 2 for forgery/larceny involving KLM.

Randy tries to distance himself from Frischling, even feigning ignorance of how to spell his name! It's poorly written with punctuation and capitalization errors but you can get the basic picture. We will add our comments in red.

Greetings and i trust that the week has been a great one for you.

I remember we had exchanged emails a few years ago so hope you don't mind me dragging it back out. I saw a tweet of yours regarding Steve Frishing (?). While you can tweet whatever you like, I'd just like to add in a few facts that may or may not be relevant. Like you, I became aware of some legal issue that has recently popped up for him. (Yes, you could call being arrested for felony forgery and larceny a "legal issue.") And like you, I likely hope that the bad guys always lose — whoever they are. While you might try and draw a correlation to BoardingArea,let's try and make sure you understand these things: Actually I've never personally met the guy and maybe have only chatted briefly with him once over the years. I have no thoughts one way or the other with the guy. (Then why are you holding onto this giant douchebag?) On the other hand, I have met and chatted with the other party, Addison over the years and consider him a valuable asset to the travel industry. It's a fact that Steve has his blog well before BoardingArea and like others, came on board BA simply because we offer and still do a nice play to host like-minded business travel and related topics blogs. I really believe the effort to try and strong arm BoardingArea into the Steve issue is extremely misguided — though I'm not directing that remark toward you. Steve could easily take his blog and move it back to Blogger. (Then why don't you encourage him to do that?) Would we all hope Google at harm for hosting the blog there? (Anyone can have a blog on Google. Google does not claim to "hand select" its bloggers from "the best of the best" like you claim.) Sad to think so. As for being "employed." Actually he is not on any specific payroll for BoardingArea. (Do you give him money?) Again, we're a hosting platform. He's not the most populat blogger of those on BA, nor is he the least read. I think he is somewhere in the middle.

I've chosen to not involve myself or BoardingArea into the dispute because it seems to be a simple business dispute among two people, neither of which i have a vested interest in the result or party to the original action. (If it were merely a "simple business dispute," then why was Frischling arrested? Why is he going to be arraigned in six days?) The one and only issue that I guide myself and BoardingArea in this is ... the issue of a members privacy. (Huh?) Now, for some, no big deal. However, I have long lobbied for an especially in milepoint.com put forth the absolute wall of privacy for our members. They deserve not only my vigilance, but also my personal action regarding the topic. If or should i get involved in this person's personal dispute, then i believe that i am no longer upholding the principle of his privacy, no different than should i really be looking at your personal ife or others as members of milepoint? (What the hell is wrong with you?) Really not, or else at least i am trying hard to make sure i am walking the talk of defending your personal privacy. I get that this is now a public, not private issue, but making a dialogue from others with public comments does not mean this individual's privacy is unlocked and by privacy, I'm referring to trying to connect it to his blog. Fact is, we've only through the years received two negative comments about his blog .... Gary Leff and Lucky factually have generated more negative comments (OK. only one more) than Steve. So, there is no explicit evidence that he has brought this issue into his blog on BoardingArea and if so, then I would certainly review my position. (Frischling is a pathological liar. Everything he writes on his blog is certainly false. He most definitely fabricated the interviews with the TSA agents last fall. And Randy looks the other way.) 

Regardless of how you might feel, understand only that i don't see this person at all in this, i only see what should i be doing to be consistent in making sure that i do not now or later ever cross a line of disregarding someone's privacy. (You cannot hide your cowardice behind privacy anymore. There is no privacy when someone is arrested - this is very public information. In Frischling's case, there have now been three news articles about it, and he hasn't even been arraigned yet.) Tough call for me — I feel bad for Addison if this is true since I'm a supporter of his, but the steadfast commitment to protect the issue of privacy does trump the issue at this moment.

I really do hope you don't mind the "rhetoric", but i'm thinking that some may be missing the driving issue for me in whatever this is about. I like others I'm sure wish that they would hammer this dispute out, it does not look good for either if we believe the accusations of Addison's active involvement in a counter smear. (The only person who has accused Addison of being involved in FishFraud is Frischling, who is a proven pathological liar. Addison has nothing to do with this site and there is no evidence otherwise. The fact is: Frischling is a despicable individual and has made so many enemies around the world that he will never know who FishFraud is.)

And to think i left this sort of stuff behind on FlyerTalk.

Again, hope you are doing well and thanks for your support of milepoint. If you ever have the time, would love to hear what you think we might be doing well on milepoint (if anything) and more importnat what we aren't doing well.

Cheers,
Randy

Here is a screenshot of BoardingArea.com's "About Us" section that describes their bloggers:

Note the highlighted portion:

The business travel blogs you will find on BoardingArea are the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the cat's meow ... you get the idea. Each blog in the BoardingArea network has been hand selected by our team for its quality of content, its timeliness, and, last but not least, for its entertainment value.

Randy has some serious problems. Is he lying in the letter, or is he lying on Boarding Area's description? Both of these cannot be true. So which is true?

Secondly, Randy is ignoring completely the other facts brought up in this blog: that Steven Frischling is a pathological liar and a raging lunatic. There can be no doubt that he is a pathological liar and a raging lunatic after what we have all witnessed the past few months. He's a terrible individual whose lies including trying to exploit tragedies like TWA Flight 800 and 9/11 to get attention for himself. Add to that this week's revelations from Flight Africa. One of Boarding Area's bloggers tried to extort $1 million from an airline, and when he didn't get his way he created a fake Twitter account impersonating the airline to harass their customers! Does that all conveniently fall under "privacy" for you, Randy?

Randy Petersen, you need to grow a pair of testicles and live up to your statement that your bloggers are hand selected and the best of the best. We could not be more disgusted with you.