“Cocooning” in the sense of staying at home rather than going out is not a political term, but The New Republic’s Jeet Heer suggests that conservatives are prone to a sort of ideological cocooning, eschewing non-conservative media to the point that it can be hard for them to “engage with reality at all.”
In a Wednesday article, Heer argued, “Distrusting the mainstream media as too liberal and putting their trust on sources like Fox News, American conservatives have increasingly taken on the characteristic of a sect where the members share an arcane language and mythology which they have trouble discussing with the outside world.”
From Heer’s piece (bolding added):
The idea of a “liberal media” is a relative recent innovation in conservative thought compared to more time-tested tropes like nationalism and celebrations of business success…
…[A] minor current of conservative complaints about liberal media bias became a full flowing river with Barry Goldwater’s run for the presidency in 1964…Conservatives interpreted the hostile reaction Goldwater sometimes received as proof of a liberal bias. It was perhaps more accurately the product of a centrist bias, the same middle-of-the-road stance that also made the press suspicious of the anti-war movement and the Black Panther party later in the 1960s…
…Distrusting the mainstream media as too liberal and putting their trust on sources like Fox News, American conservatives have increasingly taken on the characteristic of a sect where the members share an arcane language and mythology which they have trouble discussing with the outside world…
A striking example of the conservative bubble's effect came in the 2012 debate, when Mitt Romney thought he had scored a devastating point by saying that President Obama didn’t call the Benghazi massacre "terrorism" until 14 days after the event. Romney’s brief moment of triumph was quickly and devastatingly deflated by the moderator and CNN reporter Candy Crowley…One way to understand that moment is to realize that Romney’s understanding of Benghazi was entirely formed by the right-wing version events offered by outlets such as Fox News, where it is an article of faith that the Obama administration lied about the massacre…
If Romney lived in a right-wing media bubble about Benghazi, the 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls also inhabit a universe where the unchallenged shibboleths of the right-wing media hold sway…[W]e’ve had such unappetizing moments as Carly Fiorina fabricating a story about a non-existent Planned Parenthood video she claims to have seen [and] Marco Rubio falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton “got exposed as a liar” during the Benghazi investigation…
…Attacking the [mainstream] media and creating a safe space in the right-wing media might make Republicans feel more comfortable, but it does little to aid the party’s ability to argue with opposing ideas or even, in extreme cases, engage with reality at all.
