IThis is not new, but I jsut read it again this week (I have forgotten exactly where)
The Ant and the Grasshopper - Fable
Old version:
The ant worked hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thought the ant was a fool and laughed and danced and played the summer away.
Come winter, the ant was warm and well fed.
The grasshopper had no food or shelter, so he died out in the cold.
Moral of the story: Be responsible for yourself!
Modern version:
The ant worked hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thought the ant was a fool and laughed and danced and played the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper called a press conference and demanded to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others were cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC showed 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 was stunned by the sharp contrast.
How could this be in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper was allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appeared on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cried when they sang, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
Acorn staged a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations filmed the group singing, ‘We shall overcome’.
Jeremiah Wright then had the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaimed in an interview with Larry King the ant had got rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both called for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafted the Economic Equity and Anti - Grasshopper 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 was 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 was in, which just happened to be the ant's old house, crumbled around him because he did not maintain it.
The ant had disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper was found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, was taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorized the once peaceful neighborhood.
Moral of the story: Be careful how "fair" you want the government to make life.
Thanks for the laugh, Bogie. Good way to start the day!
Posted by: Cop Car | August 07, 2011 at 10:21 AM