You need to review how SMTP works. The contents of the mail message have no bearing on where messages are sent. That's exactly how BCC works: there's nothing in the message telling you who is BCC'd, but the mail is still sent to the BCC recipients, via SMTP.

Similarly, you could have the message say that someone@example.com is in the To: header, but not send it to them via SMTP.

I'm on the fence about including this in the examples.

In any event, this bug tracker is not a place for an email tutorial. From your SO link, there's a reference (by user xyref) to another question which explains this in detail: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1546367/python-how-to-send-mail-with-to-cc-and-bcc. This completely explains the issue.