Former Fox News personality and serial stalker, Rachel Marsden, has penned a column that purports to be a survival guide in these tough economic times. She condenses her advice into a 7-point program, some of which makes a little sense. She perked my interest early with her first suggestion: “Turn off the TV news.” But it just went downhill from there.

There is much to criticize in TV news. It can be shallow, artificially dramatic, and biased toward the views of the giant corporations that own them and support them through advertising. But Marsden’s call to avoid TV news is really an attempt to insure that people cultivate ignorance. She isn’t really interested in tuning out the static and disinformation of news manglers like Fox News, she just thinks that staying current on political affairs is a waste of time:

“I think everyone has a general idea of the idiocy in which Obama and the Democrats are engaged. You know why cable networks keep showing us this financial disaster porn? Because you keep watching! You don’t need to rivet yourself to a blow-by-blow of the implosion. The Obama administration is going to be like any other soap opera – you can tune out and come back in three years without having missed anything.”

Marsden’s true intent begins to unravel with her second point: “Listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, every day.” Clearly she is plotting to keep you ill-informed by avoiding responsible news sources, and then indoctrinating you to the dis-information of Limbaugh:

“Rush won’t tell you how great you are as a result of your mere existence, but he’ll tell you what you need to do to achieve greatness…”

Really? So a thrice-divorced, drug-addled, gasbag, whose motivational counsel consists of cultish calls to become an unquestioning dittohead, should serve as an example of personal responsibility and achievement? A racist provocateur who incites riots is Marsden’s idea of a role model?

Marsden’s whole scheme comes crashing down when you jump to point number five: “If you’re in university, now is a good time to seriously rethink what the heck you’re doing with your life.” Accepting for the moment that self-reflection is always a good thing, what Marsden appears to be recommending is that you drop out of school, seek vocational training, and keep your mind safe from the nasty liberal world of academia:

“Universities and colleges are businesses. Businesses run almost exclusively by liberals. That should tell you everything you need to know about what kind of return you can expect on your investment. They take your money, it disappears into the black hole of academia, and you get spit back out with your pockets emptied and your brain thoroughly washed.”

It’s interesting to hear a conservative disparage the sanctity of business. If Marsden is so repulsed by the thought of academic institutions operating in a free market, perhaps she would prefer that public education be extended to include college. I would join her in pursuit of that, but somehow I doubt that that is where she’s going.

I should be careful about agreeing to join Marsden in anything. Her history of criminal harassment is the stuff of legends. She was even thrown off the set of Fox News for “bizarre and erratic behavior,” as reported by Murdoch’s own New York Post. Somehow, though, she keeps managing to find work. This article on surviving was published by Human Events, whose bar for coherent discourse is set lower than the Mariana Trench.

When looked at as a whole, Marsden’s survival guide is nothing but the glorification of ignorance. She advocates shutting yourself off from information, immersing yourself in lies, and avoiding the destructive consequences of learning. That’s a good recipe for becoming a docile subject of the sort of brain-dead totalitarianism propagated by the Republican Party and Fox News. But it’s a terrible guide for survival in these, or any other, times.