The Ant and the Grasshopper: American Liberal Style

I saw an earlier version of this during the Clinton administration. Here’s the updated version.

The story of the ant and the grasshopper. But 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 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 covered 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. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton have the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake. President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush for the grasshopper’s plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with MSNBC’s David Gregory 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 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 with which 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 eating the last bits of the ant’s food. Meanwhile, the government house he is in, which was always so well-maintained by the ant, crumbles because the grasshopper takes it for granted and has trashed it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. 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 now-ramshackle neighborhood, which was once so prosperous and peaceful, The entire Nation collapses, dragging the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be very, very careful how you vote in the future, and especially in 2012

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