The Ant and the Grasshopper, Old and New

From Steve Berger:

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 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 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 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  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 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.