AA is the one that made the rules that you couldn't change your flight. They have a license to offer any kind of flexibility they want to help out their stranded passengers by offering flexibility to those that don't have to travel at that time. They could have called you and every booked passenger that day and offered you an alternative reservation, the mileage or whatever your motivation was. In a bad situation they failed to act fast and think creatively. I can't really blame them in hind sight but hopefully they will set up more flexible supervisor authority and call center ways of dealing with stranded passengers in the future.
More likely they will clamp down on fares that allow MR over the bad PR.