Please note that these links do exist -- but
they're in the process of being shuffled around a little because of some
asshole making an issue of my web sites in court. If one doesn't work today
-- it will very soon. I'm guessing November 30, 2005!
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.
THE 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
asks how the ants are warm and well fed while others are cold and
starving. CBS, CNN, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to video of the ant in his comfortable
home with a table filled with food. America and the world is stunned
by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such
wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Then a
representative of the NAAGB (National Association for the
Advancement of Green Bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant
with "green bias", and makes the case that the grasshopper is the
victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the Frog appears on
Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's
Not Easy Being Green." Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest
appearance on the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather
that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has
been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited
unfairly during the Reagan summers, or as Bill refers to it, the
"Temperatures of the 80's." Richard Gephardt 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-Greenism Act". Retroactive to the
beginning of the summer, the ant was 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.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits
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 he
doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the
snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of
the ant's food, they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a
wildly applauding group of compatriots announcing that a new era of
"fairness" has dawned in America.