(I apologize for not taking the time to add some more modern personalities, but it still holds)
ORIGINAL VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering
heat all summer long, building his
house and laying in 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.
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering
heat all summer long, building his
house and laying in 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, ABC, and CNN 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.
Al Gore 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-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 had 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.
