OLD VERSION:
The
ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and
laying up supplies for the winter.
The
grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer
away.
Come
winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The
grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL
OF THE STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
************************************************************
MODERN
VERSION:
The
ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and
laying up supplies for the winter.
The
grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer
away.
Come
winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know
why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and
starving.
CBS,
NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with
food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How
can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed
to suffer so?
Kermit
the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they
sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
Jesse
Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news
stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group
kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
Nancy
Pelosi and John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax
hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally,
the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the
beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate
number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his
home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary
gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against
the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill
Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.
The
ant loses the case.
The
story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s
food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s
old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.
The
ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug
related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of
spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL
OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote.