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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 he's 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 he's 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 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 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.
Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings 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 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: Vote Republican
