"...with just basic flying skills sitting in the right seat of a B767 because of special circumstances."
You must know a lot about that, since your profile shows you to currently be a VFR single-engine "commercial pilot." Might that be a flight instructor in 150s?
I don't think anybody is claiming that the media coverage was overblown, but I'm also tired of so many people claiming--perhaps because she's a woman, perhaps because she's a mere "flight attendant"--that she didn't have perfectly useful skills. Nobody is saying she grabbed a fistful of throttles and put that puppy down and made the first high-speed turnoff, but let's admit that what she needed to do, she was quite able to do.