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ORIGINAL 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'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
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 NAAGB (The National Association of Green
Bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with "green bias" and
claims 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, or as Bill
refers to it, the "Temperatures of the 80's."
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.
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grass- hopper 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
moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3pm when there
are no talk shows scheduled. The ant loses the case.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green
bugs and, having nothing left with which to pay these retroactive taxes,
the Government confiscates his home and gives it to the Grasshopper.
As the story ends we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits
of the ant's food while the ant's house crumbles around him since he
doesn't bother to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow.
On the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's
furniture, they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding
group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in
America.