In The Original Version . . . .
The industrious ant works diligently 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. However, the grasshopper has neither food nor shelter, so he dies out in the cold, as the direct result of his laziness and folly.
In The New Liberal Version . . . .
It starts out the same, but when winter comes, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant is allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up and show pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be, in a country of such wealth that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Then a representative of the NAAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on Night Line and charges the ant with "Green Bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism.
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper -- 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 and tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the poor grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the summer, or as Bill refers to it, the "Temperatures of The 80's".
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act," making it RECTROACTIVE to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs. Having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, the ant's home is confiscated by the government.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in (which just happens to be the ant's old house) crumbles around him because the grasshopper won't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared into the snow.
And on the TV which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, Bill Clinton is standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "Fairness" has dawned in America.
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