Does Michael Goldfarb have any idea what "preferential treatment" is?

Here's The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb:

Does anyone dispute that Sotomayor has been the recipient of preferential treatment for most of her life? She played a role in the hiring of a dean at Princeton -- how many alums got that kind of treatment while they were undergraduates?

Well, gee, I don't know.  How many alums won Princeton's highest academic prize?  Goldfarb seems to think that being among a select few is synonymous with getting preferential treatment.  It isn't. Maybe Sotomayor was chosen to serve on the advisory board on the strength of her academic accomplishments.  Or maybe the fact that she -- according to Goldfarb -- "launch[ed] a public campaign" to influence Princeton's hiring had a little something to do with it.  In other words, maybe she earned it.  But that thought apparently hasn't crossed Goldfarb's mind; he thinks the only possible explanation is that she was a woman and a minority.

(And if Goldfarb thinks that in 1974, Sotomayor's white male classmates had less influence via their wealthy and connected parents over Princeton's administration than did Sotomayor and he fellow Latinas, he's delusional.)

Then Goldfarb argues that Sotomayor "appears to have received preferential treatment" because a law firm recruiting Yalies apologized for "insensitive and regrettable" questions asked of Sotomayor. 

See, if a law firm asks a student who won Princeton University's highest academic prize whether she would have gotten into Yale if she wasn't Puerto Rican, then apologizes for the question, that means -- according to Michael Goldfarb -- the student is getting preferential treatment.