ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
ANCIENT
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. The
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
Then a representative of the NAAGB (National Association of Green
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries
when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green." Bill and Hillary Clinton
make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan
Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper
who has been denied the prosperity he deserves. Richard Gephardt 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 EEOC drafts the Economic
Equity and Anti-Greenism 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 moms who
can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3pm when there are no talk
shows scheduled. 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's in, which just happens to be the
ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
And on the TV, which the grasshopper
bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Bill
Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness"
has dawned in America.