R U ANT OR GRASSHOPPER?

[john frank]

G o d   B l e s s   A m e r i c a

 

 

MODERN VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain 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 he is cold and starving.  CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, 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?  Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah  with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'  ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.  Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright  has the group kneel down to pray for thegrasshopper's sake.  President Obama condemns the ant  and blames  President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope  for the grasshopper's plight.  Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid  exclaim in an interview with Larry King 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   Green Czar and given  to the grasshopper.  The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading  friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is  in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because thegrasshopper doesn't  maintain it.  The ant has  disappeared in the snow,  never to be seen again.  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 and ramshackle the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.  The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest  of the free world with it.  MORAL OF THE STORY:  Be careful how you vote in 2012.  I've sent this to you because  I believe that you are an ant!  You may wish to pass this on to other ants, but don't bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they wouldn't understand it, anyway.