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, 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 OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house,
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool, 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 he is 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’
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright
has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant
and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid 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 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 Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his freeloading friends finishing the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper does not maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow,
never to be seen again.
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 and ramshackle the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest
of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2012.
I have sent this to you because
I believe that you are an ant!
You may wish to pass this on to other ants, but do not bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they would not understand it, anyway.
