Parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper

TRADITIONAL 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 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 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 & 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. 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.