Jan 2, 2008

The ant and the grasshopper

There are two versions of this story.
OLD VERSION:

The ant worked hard in the steamy summer heat building his house and storing food and supplies for winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and plays around all summer.

The next winter the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter and he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION:

The ant worked hard in the steamy summer heat building his house and storing food and supplies for winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and plays around all summer.

The next winter the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are starving out in the cold.

Reporters from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC show up and take pictures of the starving, shivering grasshopper and show a video of the ant in his comfortable home with food on the table.

America is stunned by the contrast.

How can it be that in a country of such wealth this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer like this?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everyone cries when they sing: It’s Not Easy Being Green.

Jesse Jackson organizes a demonstration in front of the ant’s house. The news networks film the group singing: We Shall Overcome.

John Kerry and Ted Kennedy appear in a joint interview on Larry King Live. They discuss why the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper.

Congress calls for an immediate tax hike on all ants.

The EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act which is made retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs.

The ant has no money left to pay his retroactive taxes. The government confiscates his home.

Hillary arranges for her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant.

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 with the grasshopper eating the last of the food in his house (which just happens to be the ant’s old house) as the house crumbles around him because he hasn’t maintained the building.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident.

The house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.