Mr. Miller stopped paying some of the family’s bills, including, according to a lawsuit, the maintenance and docking fees for their Van Dutch speedboat — a frequent backdrop for late-night parties shared on Instagram. Such models generally sell for more than $1 million…
… Emergency medical workers found Mr. Miller unconscious in a white Porsche Carrera that he had rigged to poison himself …
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UD never knows quite what to do with the NYT’s luridly fascinating chronicles of the downfall of high-flying, risk-taking idjits. She enjoys the F. Scott Fitzgerald fizz of these accounts, the lascivious tell of the departed’s lethally high-end products and adventures, his sudden weeping in corporate meeting rooms as the walls close in …
Since the fool in this case saw fit to borrow tens of millions of dollars he couldn’t pay back, and then to saddle his wife and small children with his debt (he left a big life insurance policy, but will it pay out?), one feels okay not feeling much. I mean, pity. I guess. But since the facts of the case are so stereotypically cautionary, so much the oldest allegory in the world, the specific person to whom it happened gets lost, and one not too guiltily feels comfortable reading the account the way most people are reading it – as a final twisted chapter of clueless conspicuous consumption, the short sad bio of an Instagram braggart who meets his apotheosis in a cloud of high-performance, super-exclusive, carbon monoxide.