THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
 
 This one is a little different…
 Two 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 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.’
 
 ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news
stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has
the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.  
 
 President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush for
 the grasshopper’s plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview
with Larry King 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 once 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 2010.