Whenever the country looks like it might be distracted by some accidental lapse toward truth and common sense, the right wing media managers can usually distract us.
Such national learning events can be problematic for maintaining a well-disinformed public required to vote and act politically against its own interests. Like getting poor people to vote for politicians who pee on them by selling them something called trickle down economics.
In this case they used a Hillary 'scandal' they were probably saving for later in the election. I think, but am not certain, the story was used to distract us and the MSM from the destruction of Bill O'Reilly, one of RW media's biggest and most important liars.
Like Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly is caught lying all the time. But those are political lies, often well planned, coordinated, and reinforced. Every day, RW think tanks lay out a tasty smorgasbord of prechewed and oft-repeated talking points for the MSM to pick through. The Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Hannitys and hundreds of other talk radio and Fox liars do a lot of prechewing and regurgitating, reinforcing the lies and making it much easier for them and anyone else to repeat the lie/talking point with certainty.
Unlike Limbaugh, O'Reilly stares his adoring audience straight in the face when he lies from his "No Spin Zone". And in this case the lies in question were not political lies. O'Reilly was basically caught lying about the size of his manhood.
O'Reilly's value is measured by his ability, like Limbaugh, to be believed without a doubt when he tells his certainty addicted authoritarian audience with total certitude that his shit doesn't stink.
He sits almost as high as Limbaugh at the top of that pyramid of certitude on our currency. The alternate reality they helped create and reinforce, and its effectiveness for mobilizing the authoritarian base, depends on maintaining their godly/kingly certitude.
The excuse that OReilly is not a real journalist and Fox News is not real news (now often labeling itself online as News From Fox News, in case we forget), are not a good excuse for helping RW media brush this off with another distraction. Fox and the Republican radio stations that it reinforces have been dominant players in the dumbing down and pollution of local and national discourse and the feedback mechanisms a democracy needs to be truly representative. They are the biggest political correctness cops and censors-by-threat in the country.
Whatever you think about Hillary's 'emailgate' 'scandal' it should not be allowed to distract our media from exposing frauds like O'Reilly.