It’s time to splash some cold water in your faces and take a deep breath, dear Media. You have some tough days ahead of you. A mountain of scandal is crashing down upon Hillary Clinton, and it’s mostly good old-fashioned pay-for-play graft.

There’s nothing particularly complicated about it. Your job is to report it all to the American people, deflect the hurricane of spin blasting at you from Clinton henchpersons, and build one of those Narratives you love so much.

It will be tough, because your names have been tucked into the Rolodexes of those Clinton flacks for decades. You’re part of their social circle, where Bill is still a charming presence. Clinton operatives, and family members, have slipped smoothly into top media jobs. Clinton is the only serious candidate for 2016 from your beloved Democrat Party; every time mainstream-media editorial boards start thinking Clinton’s baggage is too heavy for them to carry, they look at the rest of the Democrat bench, swallow hard, and pick those bags right back up. But there is a Narrative here, and it’s too clear to obfuscate.

The Narrative has to include Hillary’s email scandal, since it’s now pretty obvious why she was so desperate to keep her correspondence as Secretary of State off the books, ignoring subpoenas to swiftly delete the most incriminating material. The truth is huge, and obvious, and staring you right in the face. If you pitch in with Clinton’s spin team and the Democratic National Committee to bury this story, you’ll lose whatever credibility you have left with the American people. They’ve already been given ample reason to distrust you. Clinton’s scandalpalooza has the look of a last straw about it.

The American people can smell the whiff of bovine excrement wafting from some of your early headlines. No, Hillary Clinton did not “forget” to report her millions in foreign cash to the IRS. It wasn’t a “mistake” or an “oversight.” The Clinton Foundation reported zero dollars in foreign cash, from 2010 through 2012 , even as it was pulling in tens of millions.

That’s not a minor slip-up. It’s not a transposed number, or a single box on a single form filled out incorrectly. If she wasn’t named “Clinton,” and if so much of the top-level federal law enforcement apparatus hadn’t been replaced by Obama campaign operatives with badges, she’d be in very hot water right now, and you know it, Media.

No, it’s not a remarkable “coincidence” that Russia was able to buy up 20 percent of America’s uranium reserves after slipping over two million dollars in “gifts” to the Clinton Foundation – loot she didn’t bother to disclose to the Administration she was serving as Secretary of State. The Russian uranium company showed its appreciation for Hillary Clinton by tucking half a million bucks in her purse for giving a single speech.

Clinton did this sort of thing quite frequently as Secretary of State. It’s a “coincidence” that happened over and over again. The Wall Street Journal reports on some other examples, including a mining investment company that enjoyed great support for open-pit mining operations in Bangladesh from the U.S. ambassador to that country, after cutting the Clinton machine in for two million shares, and an Irish mobile-phone billionaire who enjoyed favorable treatment from the State Department, and just happens to be a platinum-level multi-million dollar donor to the Clinton Foundation.

There’s more from the Washington Examiner, which notes that “twenty-two of the 37 corporations nominated for a prestigious State Department award — and six of the eight ultimate winners — while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton family foundation.”

No, this is not all the work of the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,” as Hillary’s flop-sweating flacks have begun claiming. The New York Times is not part of any such conspiracy. Republicans had nothing to do with Clinton’s conduct at the State Department, and they have no influence over the Clinton Foundation’s activities.

Yes, it’s very plausible Hillary Clinton would run operations like this and believe she could get away with it, Media. You know that’s true. You know what the Clintons are like, and you’re well aware of your own role in enabling them, in part because you hated the Republicans who went after Bill for perjury and obstruction of justice so very much.

Antediluvian Clinton flack James Carville blurted out, early in Clinton’s email scandal, that she kept an illegal off-the-books mail server because she didn’t want congressional Republican oversight committees to see her records. You know that’s how the Clintons and their operatives think, Media. The paranoia, the arrogance, the breathtaking sense of entitlement, and above all the confidence that you “news hounds” will cover their backs…

Here’s your chance to prove them wrong, by doing your jobs. Some of you are on the case, reporting the facts. Let’s see how you hold up when your longtime associates from the Clinton machine tell you how to write the Narrative.