If you do not understand what I was getting at in that last post, contrast it with this one.

Phil Mushnick, of the New York Post, is a real live sports journalist. That means he is a journalist who covers sports. Just watch as he rips ESPN to shreds for lying down with Barry Bonds and waking up bald with shrunken testicles.

Monday was to have been the first of a two-day seminar for approximately 125 frontline ESPN producers, reporters, anchors and analysts, gathered in a hotel near Hartford.

But day one became something else, something weird and potentially wonderful. Day one saw the closest thing to a palace revolt ever conducted against ESPN.

You see, not everyone at ESPN always willingly lines up to drink the latest, stronger blend of Disney Kool-Aid. There are ESPNers, from everywhere within the company, who are mortified by what ESPN has become. But, short of quitting, there's not much they can do about it.

Monday, however, when the topic turned to ESPN's new project with Barry Bonds, the hired help let their bosses know that they're still, minimally, broadcast journalists, with credentials to match.

If they were, they would quit, Phil. ESPN is fine if you just watch the games (and nothing else) they broadcast. (Oh, yeah. And turn off the sound most of the time.) ESPN may employ journalists, but it is not a news organization. The "E" stands for entertainment, after all.

And then they lined up to let their bosses know they simply can't quietly suffer the fact that ESPN continues to jump into bed with news figures, let alone with Bonds, currently the nation's foremost representative of sports villainy.

Next, after ESPN execs heard, "Please don't do this," from one staffer after another, the surprise guest speaker was introduced - Mike Wallace, of CBS' "60 Minutes" fame.

And Wallace joined in. After learning about the Bonds deal, Wallace told the assembled that the ESPN execs in the room - the folks who invited him - were about to embark on an unholy alliance that guarantees only ridicule and regret, in exchange.

Wallace, 88, first explained his presence by reading aloud from the invite that promised him $15,000 for the gig, then trashed ESPN management for the deal it had made with Bonds.

(Wallace, however, admitted that the two segments devoted to Tiger Woods on "60 Minutes" the previous day was a tank job, with Woods and Co. dictating the ground rules for what correspondent Ed Bradley could and could not ask.)

Physician, heal thyself.

Or at least say at the beginning of the interview "Tiger said he would not answer questions dealing with X." Not all journalists are good journalists, kiddies.

In ESPN's recent string of appalling decisions, the Bonds deal is the worst. Even in a TV world where good-faith news and sports broadcasting are regularly abandoned in favor of anything-it-takes entertainment and corporate shilling, this is the kind of decision by which a network always will be measured and remembered.

This is the kind of decision that leaves a stain.

ESPN has selected the ultimate 2006 sports bad guy - a bad guy in every way and a bad guy long before he was even suspected of juicing - and placed him on its payroll.

Sad but true.

Starting next week and relying on the thin rationalization the project is an ESPN Original Entertainment endeavor, ESPN will weekly slide into the sack with Bonds in exchange for exclusive access as he pursues baseball's hallowed home-run record, a record Bonds is now commonly known to be gaining on as a matter of ill-gotten gain.

ESPN is not only paying $4.5 million to a documentary unit to produce Bonds' diary, it will allow Bonds and his minions editorial control. It's mind-blowing.

As Monday's meeting turned to ESPN's alliance with Bonds, a trickle of stand-up-and-be-counted dissent became a flood. John Skipper, newly named Executive VP of Content, was described as "stunned" by the thumbs-down response to the project.

According to witnesses, Skipper then made some hopeful noises that, given such strong opposition from within, perhaps the Bonds project should be killed. After all, ESPN's execs had made it clear that the Bonds deal would lose money. And if it's about buying access and surrendering control, good grief, why take such a double dive for Barry Bonds?

It can't always only be about ratings, can it? Sometimes, a network's good name - what's left of it, anyway - and the good names of your employees should count at least as much as ratings, no?

By day one's end, there was genuine hope that ESPN management would come to its better senses, that ESPN would not pay to be compromised by Bonds, that ESPN would pull the plug on the Bonds project.

But Tuesday, during the second day of the seminar, Skipper announced that while he respects the thoughts of his top producers, on-air personnel and even other ESPN execs, ESPN would proceed - it would remain in bed with Bonds. Thus, what should have been out of the question is a done deal.

ESPN's bosses could have done the right thing and come out smelling like heroes. They could have said, "You know what? You're right - this doesn't pass even a minimum-standard smell test. Besides, if you folks feel this strongly about the integrity of our network, nothing else matters. The Bonds deal is dead."

But they didn't.

Did you notice all the differences in the two posts, kiddies?