The Ant and the Grasshopper
CLASSIC 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 he's 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.
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 he's 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 others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC 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 with 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 for the grasshopper's sake. Al
Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich
off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant
to make him pay his "fair share".
Finally, the EEOC drafts the
"Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination 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 appointed. The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper
finishing up the last bites 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.