I was driving this afternoon and tuned in Mark Madden's show and he predictably really ripped into Tomlin pretty much non-stop. He reiterated the part of his column I copied above and then said "it's the agenda that dare not speak its name." Soon after someone called in and I wasn't paying attention, only hearing him mention Belichick and something about him being White, guess he was comparing The Genius's fate to Tomlin remaining bulletproof. Madden quickly had him disconnected and then said again "it's the agenda that dare not speak its name, but I guess you just mentioned it." He then went on to specifically get into the racial politics involved, making the valid point that part of Tomlin's status comes from the Rooneys taking pride in never firing the team's head coach. Not much to be proud of considering that the team has only won 2 Super Bowls in 44 years since the last of the four they won under Chuck Noll in the 1970s and Tomlin's playoff record is awful over the past decade when the Steelers even make the playoffs.
Madden went pretty far for "mainstream" media, as much as one can reasonably expect, making more explicit what he had alluded to in his newspaper article. But as mentioned he also plays both sides, if you listen to him he's an open materialist and misanthrope out for himself and only himself, so he's never going to do more than occasionally drop a truthful nugget or allusion.
BTW Tomlin reportedly told the team's players today that he's returning next season. The Rooneys have always renegotiated his contracts two years before they expire but now he's headed into the final year of his current one so we'll see if any changes occur or not or whether the Steelers once again remain mired in middle of the pack mediocrity, which seems the most likely scenario at this point.