The Ant & The Grasshopper
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.
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