I guess being an NFL Insider does not have its privileges. If you’re going to draw a paycheck from the NFL’s Ministry of Propaganda, there’ll be no criticism of Dear Leader, either direct or merely implied.

Look, I don’t even blame Field Yates. The man has bills to pay. Mouths to feed. And we can all sit here and claim we would’ve refused to take down the Tweet or cited the First Amendment or whatever, what you gonna do when Roger Goodell’s jack booted thugs come for you? You can give in and keep your access. Or you can stand on principles, and probably wind up in whatever forced labor camp they put Kelly Naqi in after she went on OTL and reported the fake news that the Patriots were doing something to the kicking balls in the Deflategate Bowl.

The bottom line is that covering the NFL requires one to spout a certain ideology. Roger Goodell is a man of integrity. Roger Goodell is working tirelessly to make the game better for the fans. Roger Goodell is a tough guy who fights for the oppressed, as in this old gem from Peter King:

Thirty years ago at the Landmark, a bar just off the campus of Washington & Jefferson College in southwestern Pennsylvania, tension occasionally simmered between townies and college kids. Sometimes it was racial. One evening a black student walked in, sat at a corner table and ordered a beer. At the bar was a white townie who’d had a lot to drink. He ordered the black kid to scram. The bartender, a 21-year-old W&J senior, stepped from the behind the bar and stood between the two men.

The townie opened his coat to reveal a revolver. “I want him out!” he said, putting his hand on the gun. “I don’t care—I’ll shoot you too!”

“He can stay,” said Roger Goodell, the bartender. “He’s allowed to have a drink.”

Time stopped in the crowded bar. “Let’s just go outside,” Goodell said to the townie, and they did. Goodell walked the patron down the street and out of the Landmark for the night.

So there’s simply no room for suggesting The Ginger Hammer is taking the coward’s way out. Not the man who stood his ground and faced bullets to protect the oppressed in an incident that had zero witnesses. And if you have to delete a Tweet to keep your job and post whatever Roger tells you, you do it.