There's been a re-worked version of the age-old Aesop's fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper, making it's way around everyone's email boxes, particularly if you happen to move and shake in the more conservative realms of our political landscape. I think I've received it two or three times. It goes as follows: Two Versions Of The Ant And The Grasshopper!
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, laughs, 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, laughs, 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, & ABC 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 wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everyone cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
Jesse Jackson attends a demonstration in front of the ant 's house where the news stations film the whole group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse then has everyone kneel down and pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in a Larry King interview that the ant has gotten rich
off the back of the grasshopper, and they call for an immediate tax hike to make the ant pay his fair share.
The EEOC drafts an Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is also fined for not hiring a proportionate number of green bugs. He has nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, so his home is confiscated by the government.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant’s food while in his government house, which just happens to be the ant's house that is also crumbling 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 so the house is now abandoned, and 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 2010.
I received a "revised" edition from my humanitarian minded son that scrambles the fable in a different direction.
ANOTHER VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying
up supplies for the winter.
One particular grasshopper jumps and plays all day long during the summer. The other grasshoppers work hard but all everyone ever notices is the one grasshopper that is jumping and playing all the time.
The ant lives in a far too comfortable home, with a boat and a big screen TV. The ant looks down on the grasshoppers because they don't have as much as he does. The ant assumes it is because the grasshoppers don't work.
Further inspection reveals a few interesting things. The grasshoppers actually work harder than the ant. The ant has an air conditioned office where he works some of the time, takes coffee breaks and jokes with his co-workers. He just thinks he works hard for his money. The grass hopper works hard doing manual labor for low wages. Come to find out the grasshopper provides most of the things that make the ant comfortable and at a low cost. The ant actually was able to go to college and get a job primarily because of what his parents provided for him - money and status. The grasshopper went to school in a poor area, not getting the education the ant did. He didn't have the options the ant did.
Because of the social and economic structure when the winter comes the ant has enough in store while the grasshopper, although working hard, didn't have excess income and suffers. The ant turns up his nose and says that the grasshopper deserves this situation and will not help out the grasshopper. Silly ant.
Come spring the Gardener sees the ant's prideful attitude and destroys the ant nest and gives the goods from the ants to the grasshoppers
MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't be arrogant.
5 comments:
awesome.
Loved this! It seems that both analogies have some "right" to them. How do we follow the "rightest" path?
Ha ha! I loved the last one myself. The "conservative" version really got me when they wrapped up the story by saying the grasshopper died of drugs, etc. etc. Wow? Really? Did the person who wrote this have any wide spread contact with drug addiction in our society? Did he think to include that the ants have just as many kids addicted to oxi-cottons, heroine, etc. I also wonder if the ant would have lost his house were he not making so many monthly payments on his numerous toys he had purchased.
Isn't this the basic premise for "A Bug's Life?" Ha ha. :)
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