So, here are most of his statements, broken down. Even allowing for the fact that he’s certainly not a communications professional, I don’t have as positive a view on his statements as others. Part of that is the shitty writer. But I just don’t think he comes off well at all.
OK. So, what has he done?
So, for starters, a court ordered apology is, definitionally, not “in the immediate aftermath of the incident.” This seems to be the interested reporter carrying water for him, rather than puffery by Miller himself, but it’s nonsense.
Next, I mean, do we even give credit for a court-ordered apology? It’s not like he volunteered and did it on his own.
OK. So, tried to add him on Snapchat.
This isn’t the only usage of the word “friends,”and it seems both completely incongruous as to the behavior at issue and the mother’s version of things. Yet Miller repeats the usage, such that it’s possibly a tell of coached behavior or self-interested narrative deflection that misrepresents both the scope of the bad conduct as well as the relationship between the two.
Again, “We we’re friends, and we could be friends again,” seems to badly misstate reality in which a Court gave you a stay away order and the kid’s mother says he’s emotionally traumatized and scarred. It’s possible that this is self-deception, but it feels worse than that.
Rhetorical primacy.
So, here’s how it affected him again. And he also sees a counselor now. So, we’re up to a court mandated apology and some counseling.
So, yeah, it’s really difficult to see this as anything but clumsy narrative deflection/gaslighting. It’s not just Miller, here. It’s “these boys.” It’s “always
playing around.” We can make an allowance that the guy writing this is bad at what he does, but, if Miller’s and his mom’s quotes are accurate, they’re very likely practiced and intended to minimize the problem as an unfortunate incident between good friends.
OK, so what was the “above and beyond”?
Court ordered 25 hours of community service.
That’s like . . . three weeks of being a Little League coach. It’s less time than some posters here have spent complaining about the 2015 draft. And it’s court-ordered.
So, what else?
OK. So his former coach notes that he participated in what at first blush seems a lot like the Bruins going and visiting Children’s Hospital, right? What was the scope and time commitment? I have to think that, if it were truly substantial, the specifics would have been noted by one of the many interested parties. Given that they weren’t, this feels a lot like, “He went along on our soup kitchen and nursing home and high school visits.”
So, I have this thing about kitchen sink argumentation: when you pile on shitty arguments, it calls into question the credibility of your whole narrative. So what we have here is Miller “working with” a teammate who has a certain impressive sounding credential for borrowing, in the hopes of doing something that he didn’t actually do, because we certainly would have been told if he did.
Continue what work, exactly?
Anyone got this letter? Because I see:
1. Court mandated apology;
2. Court mandated community service;
3. Participation in team community service at a rate similar to others; and
4. Seeing counselors.
“North Dakota lied to me and protected themselves instead. NHL teams are protecting themselves as well.”
So, I guess other people who interviewed him feel much the same way I do when I read this article written by someone who, admittedly, is doing Miller no favors.
This article is super long on letting Miller try to take credit for stuff he never ended up doing.
Jesus, dude. Read the fucking room. Denial of agency (“what happened to me and Isaiah,”) and description of what he, Miller, had to suffer.
Obviously, I come at this stuff from a certain tradition and method and view it through a certain lens. But this really does not strike me as a good article for Miller.
Edit: And, apparently stuff happened as I was breaking this down. Viewing Newley’s statement charitably, it seems that the org was stupid/lazy/negligent enough to take Miller’s dishonest framing of the incident as accurate?!?