THE ANT AND
THE GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different... . Two Different
Versions.... .......... .... Two Different Morals
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!
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 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 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 every-
body 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 to God 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
& 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 & 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 free-loading friends finishing up 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
doesn't 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 the ramshackle, once
prosperous and once 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 2010.
I’ve sent this to you because I believe that
you are an ant – not a grasshopper!
Make sure that you pass this on
to other ants. Don’t bother
sending it on to any grasshoppers
because they wouldn’t
understand it, anyway.