ORIGINAL VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer, building his house and laying 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.

MODERN VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in 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 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 pictures 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 saying, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the ant 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 Anti-Grasshopper Act,” retroactive to the beginning of 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 had 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.

-- TomK(Mich) (tjk@cac.net), March 21, 2002

Answers

TomK ,Sounds like the amanitas' have spung up early in your neck of the woods.

-- SM Steve (unreal@msn.com), March 21, 2002.

I first saw this a few years ago and it's really pretty representative of what the mindset is in this country. Sad to say.

The current updated version should probably include something like this........"The Ant was escorted by federal officers from the steps of the courthouse minutes after the conclusion of the trial. He was in the midst of a postrial interview with reporters, where he questioned the actions of the government in confiscating his home. He is currently being detained on domestic terrorist charges for his anti-government statements. Our sources say that Ant may have links to overseas terrorist organizations, arms smuggling, drug trafficing and child molestation. One federal agent agent, speaking anonymously, contends Ant represents "A small but dangerous element in society, who believe the government can't take care of it's people and will go as far as taking care of themselves, while forsaking those around them". Film at eleven.

-- John in S. IN (jdoofus@hotmail.com), March 21, 2002.

I like it!

Good ending for current affairs, John. lol...grrr, gulp.

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), March 21, 2002.

How true, how true!

-- Barb in Ky. (bjconthefarm@yahoo.com), March 22, 2002.