The Ant & the Grasshopper or, Chris is on Vacation

A friend e-mailed this to me, and I thought it was a fun read worth sharing.

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER: TWO VERSIONS OF A PARABLE


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, he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Individual actions have consequences.
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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 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 others are 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.”
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God
for the grasshopper's sake.
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.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits
of the ants 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.
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.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Government actions have consequences.