WESTERN
WORK ETHIC
So
Very True ORIGINAL
VERSION
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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. --------------------------------------------
MODERN AMERICAN VERSION
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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 video of the ant in
his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America
is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth,
this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Then
a representative of the NAGB (The national association of green bugs) shows up
on Nightline and charges the ant with green bias, and makes the case that the
grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit
the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings
"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
they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by
those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers. Richard Gephardt 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-Greenism 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 hearing officers that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent
welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3 PM.
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's in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles
around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in
the snow. And
on the 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.
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