The weirdest thing is that I think this might be an act of revisionism. I recall reading a post on HN a few (or more than a few) months back about a startup writing a post-op article with reasons about why they had been rejected by YC, and among them was some musing that maybe it was because they didn't look like Zuck. pg responded in the comments not by saying that "it's a joke!" but that they once made that mistake and learned from it. That would at least vindicate the NYT usage of the 'meme'.

I do want to note, that on the face of it, it does not sound like pg was joking. Couple that with the fact that pg did say sometime ago that strong accents are a part of negative predictors. So following that up with the comment about Zuck-doppelgangers being more likely to succeed, the quote doesn't strike one as being a joke -- “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ” So, YC did go on to fund this guy. Considering that YC is pretty competitive in choosing the right people and has a low acceptance rate... and this guy did get in, can it really be said that his looking like Zuck had zero sway?

I think pg & co. should just move on with this, not by trying to weasel out of this, but by saying they made a mistake and they'll try to do better.