An old adage

Sent to me from Prof. Lynskey…..

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, MSNBC 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?

Barack Obama appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries
when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green”, and blames it on a right wing philosophy.

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ants’ 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, Barney Frank & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the
ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and call for and retroactive
tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Hillary and Barack go on national television agreeing that the plight of the
grasshopper is the fault of George Bush and “8 years of Republican Administration
neglect”.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the year.

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.

Obama’s buddies in the tort lobby gets a campaign contributor / 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 of course 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. However his lawyers
will sue both the manfacturer and governement who provided the housing.

The ant has since disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is later 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 very careful how you vote in 2008.