Debate Magazine

The Ant and the Grasshopper: Two Versions

Posted on the 09 February 2014 by Hughvw
Our industrious Alaska Contributor, TG, found this on the intertubes:


    THE  NEW ANT and the Grasshopper, " Two Versions:"   The  ANT   AND  THE   GRASSHOPPER        This  one is a little different....   Two  Different Versions ...   Two  Different Morals          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  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.
      MORAL  OF THE OLD STORY:
              Be  responsible for yourself!               MODERN     VERSION             The  ant works hard in  the withering heat and the rain 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 shivering grasshopper calls  a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be   allowed  to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving..  
  CBS,  NBC, PBS, CNN,   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 ...'         Occupy  the Anthill stages     a  demonstration in front of the ant's house  where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, we shall overcome.   Then  Rev Al Sharpton's assistant has  the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper   while  he damns the ants. The Reverend Al can not attend as he has contractual commitments to appear on his MSNBC show for which he is paid over two million dollars a year to complain that rich people do not care.
      President  Obama condemns  the ant and  blames   President  Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan,  Christopher Columbus, and the     Pope     for  the grasshopper's   plight
  Nancy  Pelosi & Harry Reid   exclaim  in an interview on The View    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 & 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  Green Czar and  given to the grasshopper .
  The  story ends as we see the grasshopper and  his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's  food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just  happens to be the ant's  old house, crumbles  around them because the grasshopper  doesn't maintain it.
  The  ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.  
  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 ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.     The  entire Nation collapses bringing  the rest   of  the free world with it.
  MORAL  OF THE STORY:
  Be  careful how you vote in 2014 and 2016.  
   I've  sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant.  not  a grasshopper !
  Make  sure that you pass this  on to other ants .
      Don't  bother sending   it  on to any grasshoppers   because  they wouldn't   understand  it, anyway    

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