Onion Blog

https://www.theonion.com/egyptian-conservationists-fight-to-protect-dwindling-mu-1819568830

The reason I chose this specific article was because it was written in the year I was born. I thought reading some articles written at that time would give me an idea of what was happening in culture at the time… it didn't.

This article reported on a story of the decreasing number of mummies in Egypt. It talked about how the mummies were being hunted to extinction (ironic as they are dead). The article discusses how the Egyptian government is passing laws to protect the reproduction of mummies; however, the government is not doing anything to stop the real cause of their deaths, poachers. It shows how governments often put up a facade over their real intentions and motivations. Satisfied with only doing the bare minimum. In this article, the Egyptian government is pretending to help the mummy's population stabilize, but they are not doing anything to solve the real problem as described by the article. They’re not stopping the mummies from getting run over by cars on the superhighways or their homes from being robbed. It shows how many organizations are so focused on increasing the future outlook of society that they forget to think about the present moment. It is just, if not more important to protect the mummies that still exist today than to create more. To help add to the illusion of credibility of the article the author cites conversations from both mummies and citizens. One such citizen saying, “My grandchildren have still never seen a mummy.” While the reader is fully capable of understanding the fact that mummies do not exist and that this is a false story, by citing a “real” human the reader is more immersed in the fictional world making the problems discussed feel more palpable.