CLASSIC 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 he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. Grasshopper has no food
or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
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 he's 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 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. Al Gore exclaims in an interview with
Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper,
and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the EOC 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
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:
VOTE REPUBLICAN
