HELP: The Ant and the Grasshopper - throw it back at them

I'm part of a local group of ham radio operators that has a typical club email list.  Recently, the president of that group, an elderly gentleman, posted a rather partisan anecdote, which I'm sure you've seen before, to the entire list.  This wouldn't normally get to me, but our club is a-political in nature and it's deemed bad form to delve into divisive issues such as politics (and at the same time, we all aren't so insulated from reality that we can't let a little politics slip into the discussion now and then).

He's been moving more and more into problematic territory and this is only the latest of his forays into shoving his views down everyone else's throats.  AT the moment, I am new enough to the club, as well as young enough, to get away with throwing a well-thought piece back at him.  The other liberals in the group are a bit afraid to speak up.  I will not remain silent.  :)

(jump the hump)

For starters, I'm thinking that ants are probably a great allegory for the GOP.  The fact that they live in a hierarchical society with no upward mobility for the masses is a good start.  The fact that come winter, the royalty flies off and leaves the masses to fend for themselves, usually starving to death (contrary to this simpleton's anecdote) since all the food stores were put away for the royalty.  Never mind that if you don't go along to get along in an ant colony, the others gang up on you and tear you to pieces.  In an ant colony, there's a decider, and then there are all the rest.  But so far, these aren't fun or funny allegories.  

Here's the anecdotes as sent to us on the list and any help you can provide with coming up with a real comeback to this 'tale' would help.  I've Googled it and it appears all over the wingnut Blogosphere, so maybe it's time we start having a little fun with their fairytales:

The Ant and the Grasshopper

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, 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 Clinton 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: Be careful how you vote.

•  Not a tip jar

  The only tips I want are how to turn this story back around so it gets under the skin of fools who tell the GOP version of the tale.

  :)

  by jackspace on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 11:44:00 AM PDT

  •  Hasn't the government been stealing

    from the and ants and the grasshoppers for decades?
    The income tax act was never properly passed. See "America - Freedom to Fascism".

    by Tigana on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:18:01 PM PDT

    •  Milan Kundera said

      Milan Kundera said "the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting"

      all the same, I don't mind paying my fair share for the use of roads, a decent postal system, public education, a well-trained military (which is ONLY used when absolutely needed), oversight over big business, state-funded Universities, social welfare programs (when they are not being gutted or politicized), public transportation, the Internet (yes your tax dollars made it possible), local state and federal courts, the space program, the National Center for Disease Control, the GI Bill, projects for the common good, local state and federal parks, the list goes on and on.

      If you're reading this message, you are one of the beneficiaries of a tax-funded government program.  If you received mail today, your tax dollars helped make that possible.  If you drove on a road today, chances are you and your neighbors didn't build that by yourselves.  If you speak read and write good English, and you went to a non-private school, you have benefitted again from taxes.

      No American is an Island (for very long).

      :)

      by jackspace on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:52:19 PM PDT

    •  O jeez

      not this shit again...

      by debedb on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 02:30:39 PM PDT

  •  I posted a diary back in Feb about this same

    email that my mom had forwarded to me, thought you might like to see it!
    http://www.dailykos.com/...

    BTW, my mother forwarded my response to the offending relative, don't know if they responded or not, I doubt it, they just assume we all agree and can't handle having their tripe thrown back in their faces.

    by AntKat on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 04:48:51 PM PDT

•  So George W. Bush is a hard-working ant...

  or so they say.  I like that you're trying to turn this around, but I can't think of an allegory in the animal kingdom where one creature has a lifetime pattern of making horrible messes, blaming the other creatures for not liking it, and then someone else has to clean them up.  I'll think about it, though.  

  by theark on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 11:50:57 AM PDT

  •  No...

    He's a Republican't.

    by NJRick on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 04:23:19 PM PDT

•  And the point of this is?

  Typical Republican masturbatory fantasy. Hard-working Republican ants, lazy liberal grasshoppers. Evil liberal politicians supporting lazy grasshopper.

  How about this
  Ants = Hard-working people, liberals
  Grassshoppers = Republican fat cats

  Ant works hard to have a place to stay in the winter but grasshopper calls on two lazy friends. If we can pour gasoline down the ant whole, we can force them out and take it over for ourselves. Or we can claim it is all our land. Maybe we can have the ant hole condemned and put up a big casino. Just let the ants work. Well just come in en masse later and force them out of their homes. Of course, the grasshopper makes such bold pronouncements when he has a lot of grasshopper friends there. When he is outnumbered by the ants, the grasshopper complains how it is all these ants that make it harder to him to find a warm place in the winter and it is unfair.

  by gladkov on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 11:55:31 AM PDT

•  Aardvarks

  at least that is what the Dems will be in 2008?

  Oh for the benefit of the diarist, an aardvark is AKA an anteater, it eats ants. I thought based on level of intellect and wit involved in this "diary" you clearly stole from someone else smarter then you ( you know someone with a double digit IQ), I thought it was necessary to explain it to you.

  AKA, by the way, is a brief way of saying also known as.

  Oh and IQ means... forget it, I don't have the time to fill in all the blanks for you.

  Hey you better go now, or you'll miss todays episode of Sesame Stree.

  Bye bye.

  by bam bam on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:02:45 PM PDT

  •  Read it again

    Hey Bam Bam,
    You're preaching to the choir.  I happen to be a liberal and I am trying to come up with a funny come-back to this sorry ant-grasshopper story.

    So I'll take your flames and redirect them towards the dumb-ass who sent this story to me in the first place.

    But meanwhile, will you help come up with something to counter this?  Especially since April 1st is coming soon and I want to take that opportunity to have a laugh at HIS expense?  :)

    I guess I get miffed when I see them attack Kerry, whom I still respect (he could have fought harder to have the elections in Ohio investigated but  . . . Gore could have fought harder in Florida etc . . .).  And doesn't it get stale when they bring Hillary into the mix?  As if they have already decided she will be our candidate (I'm still undecided as to which Dem I will be supporting in the primaries).

    Anyway, read carefully THEN and only THEN apply finger to the trigger is necessary.  :)

    Democratically and Liberally Yours
    Jack

    by jackspace on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:11:19 PM PDT

    •  Ironic comment, isn't it. n/t

      by Pragmatic Left on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:37:48 PM PDT

    •  Oh crap

      well, just you know, well...

      Late response, I do most of my blogging at work.

      There are just so many diaries, you tend to just notice something out of the ordinary and, sometimes react.

      Sorry. But hey, feel free to use the comment.

      Problem with block quotes, that is the part people can focus on.

      by bam bam on Thu Mar 29, 2007 at 06:29:19 AM PDT

•  The grasshopper and the Ant

  The Ant spent all summer amassing a fortune in seeds. He stole from every other seed gatherer to make him and the rest of his army rich and well-fed.  Ants don't think for themselves, they think only of the hive and how to protect the queen.  The queen calls the shots and all the ants obey.  If an ant steps out of line, the rest of the ants gang up on him and he never steps out of line again.

  The Grasshopper spent her summer volunteering to help rebuild New Orleans, engineering clean energy sources, and helping to create a system of health care that benefited everyone in the forest, even ants.  She had a great time and spent her spare time making music, art, and more importantly, making friends.  Grasshopper didn't have too much time to accumulate food, but the other insects and forest dwellers she helped all summer helped her to survive the winter.  

  Some of her fellow grasshoppers behaved the same way, some didn't. That was ok with Grasshopper.  She was too busy improving the world to worry about who agreed with her philosophy.

  Grasshopper and Ant both survived the winter.  The Ants hive flourished at the expense of others.  The Grasshopper survived in symbiosis with others.

  Who can say who was happier and better off?  Me, I'd rather be a grasshopper.

  by Tracker on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:03:51 PM PDT

  •  Yes, Grasshoppers are hardly Extinct

    Come on now, did't the ant royalty all fly off in late Fall?  Leaving the workers to starve and freeze to death?  

    :)

    This is great and I think I'll toss this in the direction of the old crank who sent it to me.  

    Rock ON!

    Jack

    by jackspace on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:15:31 PM PDT

•  We are the ants...

  I'll leave the prose up to you, but to me the allegory seems to flow like this:

  Ants work together, built a strong society that takes care of all its members, invest time and money into infrastructure.  Grasshopper is born big, has everything handed to him on a silver platter and then wonders why his failure to plan (Iraq, Katrina) leaves him out in the cold, alone.  Blames ants for his predicament.

  You could also go the route of: Ants act like they are the only species on earth, that they are always right, nothing can hurt them.  They proceed to invade tons of places they don't belong, like my kitchen.  And then instead of grasshoppers, we have people (Democrats) who step in and exterminate the ants. (Insert Tom DeLay joke here).

  Some cool things about ants that you should work in:

  Ants are highly organized
  Ants have no hearts
  Ants have caste systems
  Ants can teach and learn
  Some ants are static, others are nomadic
  Some ants cooperate to build bridges
  Some ants, such as the Amazon Ants, are incapable of feeding themselves, but must rely on captured worker ants to care for them. In some cases ant colonies may have other species of ants or termites within the same nest.

  I'm curious to see what you come up with.  Please post when you are done.

  by Pragmatic Left on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:24:35 PM PDT

  •  Ants have no hearts!!!

    I had not idea--very interesting!

    by theark on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:26:21 PM PDT

    •  Fortunately for the metaphor, grasshoppers do. nt

      by Pragmatic Left on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:41:35 PM PDT

•  The scorpion and the turtle

  and the scorpion Republican said "I can't help it... I'm a scorpion"

  by Hey BB on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:37:15 PM PDT

•  The Ant And The Grasshopper ... TAKE 1

  Once there was an ant and a grasshopper. After the first thaw, the ant started hard at work building a home. His friend the grasshopper came by.

  "Say ant, what are you doing on this fine spring morning?"

  "Why grasshopper, I'm building a home and storing food. Come winter, I will be able to survive the dire cold."

  The grasshopper, seeing the ant's example, decided to do the same. But no sooner did he set out to accomplish this task when he found that all the wood to build a home was gone, and all the food was taken.

  "Say ant," asked the grasshopper, "how did you go about collecting the materials and food?"

  "Oh, well I had to get it all from the valley. It's about a good two-hour drive from here."

  The grasshopper blinked his eyes and said, "Grasshopper, I have no car to take me to the valley."

  "Can't you take the bus?"

  "The bus doesn't go to the valley."

  "Maybe you should buy a car."

  "I have no money for a car."

  "Well, I guess you're fucked," said the ant, and continued to build his home.

  Then the grasshopper struck upon an idea. "Say ant, how about we strike a deal? I'll help you build your home and sort your food, if you pay me enough money to buy a car."

  The ant pondered this. "I would, but I know that all grasshoppers are lazy, and besides, you'd just steal my food and invite your grasshopper friends over to trash the place."

  "No I wouldn't. Honestly."

  "Okay, but I have my eye on you."

  So the grasshopper and the ant worked through the spring, and soon the grasshopper had enough money to buy an old '78 Buick. Overjoyed, the grasshopper set out to drive to the valley every Sunday to collect building materials and food. He knew that he would have to work hard to collect even half as much food and building materials as the ant, for summer was here and winter rapidly approaching, but he knew that with this plan he would be warm and well-fed.

  And so he pursued this plan. The way to the valley was fraught with danger. Sometimes his old beater broke down and had to be fixed. Sometimes he got pulled over by the cops, who figured that a grasshopper in these parts was nothing but trouble. Insurance premiums ate into his earnings. But he persisted, and eventually built a small, modest home, and got just enough food to survive until winter.

  The next spring, the tax collector came along, assessed the grasshopper's property, and presented him with a tax bill that was worth more than the grasshopper had earned all last year working for the ant. Shocked, he went to his friend the ant's place to commiserate, only to find the tax collector unloading a dump truck of food onto the ant's lawn.

  "Uh, what the fuck?!?" said the grasshopper, stunned. "How come when the tax man comes along, I get a whopping tax bill and you get food?"

  "That's the President's tax cut," said the ant. "This food is my refund on my income, most of which came from the dividends from the stocks I held last year. And just so you know, I did get a tax bill myself, but thanks to this tax break, I can pay for it easily."

  "Wait a minute! I worked hard! I built your house and got my beater and built my own house and got my own food! Where the hell's my tax refund?"

  "Oh no. The tax refund was only for the wealthy creatures. Not for lazy grasshoppers like you who don't pay their fair share."

                 The Moral: Vote Democratic, Naturally!

  by PBen on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:45:13 PM PDT

•  The Ant And The Grasshopper ... TAKE 2

  The ant met the grasshopper one day, and concvinced his winged friend that in fact the life of toil is worth living.

  So the grasshopper gives up the wine, women, and song (watching in envy as his former grasshopper friends continue to live life to the fullest around him), and instead begins to make preparations for the long and arduous winter ahead.

  The summer flies by (no pun intended), and as the cool autumn months begin to wane as well the ant stops by the grasshopper's den.  "I'm quite impressed!" exclaims the ant.  "You've build up quite a supply to last you through the winter.  You're almost as good as an ant!"

  "Why, thanks," says the grasshopper, demurely.  "I have done exactly as you said.  The other grasshoppers will be so sorry that they wasted their time making friends, making babies, and making noise instead of doing the sensible thing."

  The ant, secure in the knowledge that his grasshopper convert will live out the winter in ease, heads back to The Hill to wait out the winter himself.

  First big thaw next spring, the ant heads straight off to visit his grasshopper friend.  When he gets there, he stops in surprise at the door.  There, in the middle of the room, is the carcass of the dead grasshopper.  "How can this be?" the ant wonders. "He was doing so well!"

  Scrawled in tiny handwriting is a note, lying next to the body.  The ant picks it up and stares in disbelief.

  "Dear Ant," the note reads, "I am writing because come spring I will be dead.  See, in these last cold nights, I have remembered something quite depressing:  Grasshoppers die off in the winter, whatever preparations we make, and only the larvae we can produce during the mating season survive to next spring.

  "Because of you and your advice, I have come to realize in these last days that I have not lived, I have not loved, and I leave no legacy to the world but this room full of provisions I cannot use.

  "Thanks a lot, Ant."

          The Moral:
              Don't run around making hay when your nature is to be rolling in it!

  by PBen on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:48:08 PM PDT

  •  That's friggin HILARIOUS!!!!

    I just keep fixating on what happens to the ant hill when the boss takes off to Uruguay and (s)he's raided the cupboards and made off with all the other royalty.

    Aren't the ants left to fend for themselves, often getting invaded by another ant colony or just going into the future carrying someone else's rock?

    :)

    by jackspace on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 01:07:49 PM PDT

    •  Anthill boss=She n/t

      by Pragmatic Left on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 01:13:57 PM PDT

•  Ants are socialists.

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  by Halcyon on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 12:59:11 PM PDT

  •  Fixed it for him. n/t

    by Pragmatic Left on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 01:15:46 PM PDT

•  Just for the record

  At some point in my childhood I read a book telling the Ant and the Grasshopper, but with a slight twist.

  The ants worked hard all summer while the grasshopper played the violin all summer.

  Winter came and the ants were all cooped up in side the hill with nothing to do.

  The saw the grasshopper cold in the snow and invited him in.

  The ants fed the grasshopper and the in return he played his violin for them and all the ants danced and weren't bored anymore.

  Just sayin'. I always loved that version of the story.

  by april5k on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 02:33:36 PM PDT

•  I wrote...

  this several years ago in response to an e-mail I received from a rather rupugn"ant" individual:

  Yeah, but in the REAL America:

  The grasshoppers work for the ant, and bust their butts for minimum wage. But don't complain, because they like their jobs & it puts food on the table & the kids in school.

  The ant toils day & night trying to convince the government that a free market without the hindrance of regulation, is what true capitalism is all about.   Any minimum wage hikes will bankrupt the company & any effort to reduce emissions and pollution by his company would be too costly & thus hurt the economy.  Hence, the antvironment can be choked silly & future generations will have to worry about it, because under the Republicants, it's "damn everyone/everything, MAX profits ahead".

  In the meantime, the grasshoppers join a union, in an effort to gain better health insurance, annual pay raises, and job security.

  The ant, on the other hand, is busy spinning off shell companies in the Cayman Islands & Argentina in an effort to hide debt, pay no annual taxes, and drive company stock prices through the roof.  When the crap is about to hit the fan, the ant sells off as much stock as possible.  While the ship is going down, forces the grasshoppers to keep their ANTRON stock, all the while telling everyone that all is well & there's no reason for concern.

  The ant & friends have over the years consolidated, absorbed & bought out so many smaller corporations, they essentially own the media in nearly every form.  FOX & ANT News spews out mindless/newsless crap. The likes of Rush Limbant, Sean Hanttity, Ant Coulter & other right wing punants endlessly rant about how great the grasshoppers have it, because of the immense benevolence of the ant & his friends (whom just so happen to sign the pundant paychecks).  ANTRON is evidence that true capitalism works & we
  should be PROUD that the ants were able to rake in millions.  DO NOT COMPLAIN; ASK NO QUESTIONS: other jobs will come along (as soon as bankruptcy proceedings and reorganization are complete). As true patriotic Americants, the grasshoppers should "Don't Worry, Be Happy"!

  We could get into the ANTRON required pipeline through AfghANTistan. But that's another story!

  MORAL:  Pull your head out & vote Democrat!

  by NJRick on Wed Mar 28, 2007 at 04:22:22 PM PDT