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, President Obama approves the EEOC draft from
the Economic Equity & 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, when he was in office, 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 in 2008