The Grasshopper and the Ant

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Duke

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I almost put this in the humor forum, except for the last line. We all know Republicans have no sense of humor.
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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 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, 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.

Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings 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 the toe 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.
 
No, I didn't, but thanks! My sister, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, sent it to me from one of her friends.
 
It's an excellent story. Very true. Except for the vote republican part. From that you'd think that republicans were all about reducing social spending - that's not what Bush has been up to though.

It should say vote libertarian.
 
Hmm. I bet you didn't think this would be such a good litmus test of core morality when you posted it, did you Duke? ;)


M
 
I think John Grisham wrote a pretty decent version of this ... isn't it called A Time To Kill? It isn't all that different from the 2nd version, bar a few details. ;)

I've seen stories like this often before. I can understand them very well - we often don't understand what's going on out there in the U.S. We call it 'claim culture' and it doesn't work here. It reminds me of what happened to Michael Jackson.

There's many versions you can make of this tale, btw. ;)

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 he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

Going out to collect some wood, he slips and brakes his back and lies there until he dies. The Grasshopper finds him, eats him, and moves into his house.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican (if you feel lucky)

;)

oh and indeed, aren't ants more like commies? :lol:
 
Don't grasshoppers spit a lot? Isn't spitting illegal? Wouldn't it then follow that grasshoppers are criminals?

Speaking of litmus tests of core morality, I am reminded of another animal story I first heard in the movie The Crying Game.

A frog and a scorpion need to get accross a river. The frog can swim it but the scorpion can't. The scorpion asks the frog to let him ride on his back but the frog says no because he's afraid the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion explains that it would not be in his best interest to sting him because he would drown, too. This makes sense to the frog so he agrees and they make their way accross the river. Suddenly the frog feels a searing pain in his back. The scorpion stung him. The frog with his last breath asks "Why did you do it?" The scorpion, with his, answers "It's in my nature."
 
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