So the Detroit woman who taught herself Excel and outscored Stanford and Harvard grads, and is held out as validation of Friedman's thesis - she's only referred to as a "top applicant". Did she get the job? And if not, what was the background of the person who did?

Otherwise, my only take-away from this article is that in a column ostensibly about meritocracy, Tom Friedman managed to turn 3/4 of his column inches into a PR piece for a company run by his daughter's Yale buddies.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality...