CDR: The Ant and the Grasshopper

[Anonymous]

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 and laughs, 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 and laughs, 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 "Its 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.

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 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.