That linked article never even mentions the normal distribution -- it is just talking about how culture often misdefines "normal people" as straight white people.

Whatever the merits of that argument, that's not what the SciAm article was claiming -- which was a either ignorance or a deliberate confusing of the popular and technical meanings of the word "normal". She might as well said that magnetic fields have to do with the plots of land farmers grow crops on because they are both "fields".