Just received this parable in an email from a very hard working and responsible Republican ant.
This one is a little different..
Two Different Versions!
Two Different Morals!
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, 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 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'. 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, President Obama approves the EEOC draft from 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. 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 Clinton appointed, when he was in office, 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: Be careful how you vote in 2008
Uhg, I guess ants do have little minds and narrow perspectives.
Well, as you can probably imagine, I couldn't resist responding.
A RESPONSE FROM THE ANT KING
Exactly, why don't THESE grasshoppers take responsibility for themselves. How dare they expect any empathy or humanity from us ants? We worked damn hard for what we ants have and any grasshopper that doesn't have the same can only blame themselves for being lazy and stupid. I've never met a hard working ant that lost their job or home because of unforeseen medical expenses or a natural disaster. So it must be true! I've never known a grasshopper that wasn't lazy and stupid just like their parents. So it must be true! Grasshoppers don't want to work or try to better themselves and the only reason THESE grasshoppers are having a hard time in this economy can only be because they are lazy and stupid. We ants should just sit in our homes and smile while we look out our windows and watch all of these useless grasshoppers dying in the streets. Go America! I got mine! Screw you! XOXO The Ant King
Over 35 million Americans (over 12 million children) live below the poverty line (many without adequate food). There are 1.4 million children that experience homelessness in this country each year. Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States. Over 45 million people in this country cannot afford adequate health insurance.
And, you know what, I bet EVERY ONE of them deserves their fate because they didn't take responsibility and spent all their time dancing around and being lazy. There's nothing like homelessness and hunger to make you want to dance. Why couldn't they just go to college and get a good job like us ants? Stupid grasshoppers. You know what else? I bet everyone that lost their jobs, homes, and savings in that so called "Great Depression" were all grasshoppers! Must have been, because no ant that worked for a living could have possibly lost their job and then needed to stand in a soup line to feed their family. Ants plan too carefully and have complete control over all aspects of their environment and society. Damn, I'm so glad I'm a hard working ant and not one of those lazy grasshoppers, because an ant can never end up like a grasshopper. I knew this one grasshopper, said he was working two jobs and had no debt, wife worked too while the two kids were in school, but then he was diagnosed with cancer, but his insurance didn't cover all the expenses, the bills were so large that he fell behind on his mortgage and was evicted, due to the chemotherapy treatment he wasn't strong enough to keep his night job at the loading docks, now he and his family are living in a shelter. Yeah, right! Please, these grasshoppers will say anything in order not to work and be responsible! Peace, The Ant King
Please forward this to all your superior ant friends.