The Ant and the 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 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 &Anti-Grasshopper Act retroact ive
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 in 2008!