Feb2399ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
The Original Version: The ant works hard, in the withering heat all summer long,
builds his house and lays in 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.
90's Modern American Version: 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, followed by a 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 a
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. They 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. Or, as Bill refers to
it, the "Temperatures of the 80's."
Dick 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-Greenish Act,"
retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a
proportionate number of green bugs. With nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, the
government
confiscates his home.
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 moms, who can only hear
cases on Thursdays between 1:30 and 3:00 PM. when there are no talk shows.
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 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.
