THE 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!
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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 &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.
