The Grasshopper and the Ant
The "Original 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.
The new "I Don't Want to be Politically Incorrect Version"
It starts out the same, but when winter comes, 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. National Television shows up and provides pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to a picture of the ant in his comfortable
home with a table filled with food.
Everyone is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be, in a country
of such wealth, that a poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Then a representative of the NAAGB (National Association for the
Advancement of Green Bugs) goes on television and charges the ant with
"Green Bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30
million years of "Greenism".
The poor grasshopper also appears on TV and everybody cries as he sings
"It's Not Easy Being Green."
The president makes a special National TV appearance on the Evening
News and tells a concerned audience that he will do everything he can
for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by
those who benefited unfairly during the previous administration. The
Speaker of the House exclaims in an interview with the news media that
the ant has gotten rich off the "Back of the Grasshopper", and calls for
an immediate surtax on the ant to make him pay his "fair share".
Finally the EEG (Everybody's Equal Group) drafts the "Economic Equity
and Anti-Green Act", retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The
ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs.
Then the ant, having nothing left to pay his taxes, has his home
confiscated by the government. A law firm is hired to represent the
grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant and the case is tried
before a panel of federal judges appointed from a list of single-parent
welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday afternoons between 1:30
and 3:00 PM when there are no talk shows scheduled.
The decision came and the ant lost the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing the last bites of
the ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens to
be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since no home maintenance
program had been provided. The ant disappeared in the snow. And on TV,
which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, the
president is standing before a wildly applauding group of politicians
announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in our country.
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