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THE
ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER: A
Modern Adaptation
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 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 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 "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
in their power 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 that period, as the "Temperatures of the 80's."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where
news stations film the group singing "We Shall Overcome."
Jesse then has the group kneel down 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-Ant 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. The case is tried before a panel of
federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare
recipients who can only hear cases on Thursdays between 1:30 and 3:00
p.m. when there are no talk shows scheduled. 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 due to neglect. The ant
has disappeared in the snow. And on 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 Democrats announcing that a
new era of "fairness" has dawned in America. 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.
God Bless America!
simba_b_d, November 2000
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