1 post tagged “grasshopper”

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 ants' house where on the scene reporters film the group singing, 'We shall  overcome.' Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
 
Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama claim in an interview with Larry King that ants have gotten rich off the backs of the grasshoppers, and both call for an immediate tax hike on all ants to make them pay their fair share.
 
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
 
The ant is now fined for having failed 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 former home, 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 in 2008!