CLASSIC 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, 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.

Tom Daschle & Walter Mondale 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 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.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican

Sad but true!