A Fable in 3 Versions

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.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!


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, 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".

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry 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 and 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.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

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 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: Vote Republican

I know. Ugly, racist, repugnant and for cripes sake, not even funny. The poor are poor because they're morally inferior. Hey, y'all lemme have a shot. Ready..here goes.


VULGAR VERSION:

Ahem.

The ant works so hard, so very hard all summer long. Hey, she needs the income, right. She’s a single mother now, not unusual for an ant. Especially one married to someone who had to go far away on his third pump over to the sandbox. And the third time, if you’ll pardon the expression, was the charm. You see, Mr. Ant was a truck driver back here in the world but he was also in the Marine Reserves. And boys and girls I think we all know what that means nowadays don’t we. Anyway, Mr. Ant died in a roadside bombing on Route Irish carting bottled water from the heavily fortified airport to Forward Operating Base Valiant 30 kilometers away. So sad, but as Tom Cruise would say, it is what it is.

So, Mrs. Ant is painting the spare bedroom in the basement of their town home. She’s having trouble making the mortgage without her husband’s income so she’s taking on a boarder, the President of the College Republicans at the local university. She needs to supplement her income because neither of her jobs offer health insurance. She works most nights, weekends, and holidays at SuperHypermart (and without the discount her 2 kids wouldn’t have clothes) and 3 days a week she is cook and housekeeper to the Grasshopper. She finishes the paint job and decides to be a little subversive and leaves out a Marine recruitment brochure in the room on the nightstand under the bible.

Now life is good for the Grasshopper. Got his own syndicated radio show where he works 3 hours a day, maybe 5 if he needs to record some bumpers or spend any time in the production studio, able to supplement that income with the sale of his "books" (totally ghosted by some underpaid unknown scribe) and "newsletter". People love to hear him go on and on about feminazis and environmental wackos (no Kermit in this story, amphibians all over the world are being decimated by an invasive species of fungus that now thrives in new places because night and day air temperatures are moderating due to global warming). He’s able to more than take care of his 2 ex-wives and even dates a snappy nonblonde CNN anchor for awhile. The Grasshopper asks the Ant to make another run to the pharmacy to pick up his prescription for his back pain. He doesn’t hear her reply because of the acute deafness caused by his addiction to the painkillers - so he lights up another cigar as he cranks up the sound on the preseason football game between the Eagles and the Vikings. Sure looked good on that new plasma screen HDTV the Grasshopper bought with his tax cut.

Midway through the 4th quarter just as the Vikings are about to punt - the Ant is arrested on prescription drug fraud. A felony in her State. She pleads it down to a misdemeanor if she’ll turn in the Grasshopper. She does - Grasshopper pleads no contest to a single felony charge and gets 18 months probation and rehab, the usual sentence for first time offense. First time offenders and the leniency of the justice system usually one of the Grasshopper’s favorite topics on his radio show.

Obviously Ant loses her housekeeping job but also the job at the SuperHypermart once store manager finds out about the misdemeanor conviction. She loses her boarder who was a big fan of the Grasshopper’s and is not happy that she turned on him. Oh, and he scrawls an obscenity on the recruitment brochure and leaves it on the nightstand on top of the bible.

Winter comes. Grasshopper spends the weekends in Boca Raton and just has to check in weekly with his PO.

The Ant’s younger child who already has asthma gets walking pneumonia and has to spend a week in the hospital. No health insurance, the Ant puts the whole thing on her 17.99% Mastercard. They fall behind on that one and the creditors eventually come and take the house and the Ant moves in with her sister across town. It’s a small house and they make do for awhile but truth is that her brother-in-law is a mean drunk and gets abusive when the Vikings lose.

Mrs. Ant gets her kids out of there and ends up in a shelter.

Grasshopper sits in his darkened living room watching the NBA playoffs on his big screen tv wondering why he can’t get good help these days.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican - you’re on your own out there suckahz.