The Ant and the Grasshopper
Jan. 7th, 2010 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
devils_sidekickOld 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 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 to God for the grasshopper's sake.
President Obama condems the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi & 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 & 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 the grasshopper 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 the ramshackle, once prosperous and once 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 2010.
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 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 to God for the grasshopper's sake.
President Obama condems the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi & 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 & 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 the grasshopper 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 the ramshackle, once prosperous and once 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 2010.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 05:24 am (UTC)And if the grasshopper actually had to drop out of bug high school to get a minimum wage job to help support his family... Because of that, he grew up without even a high school education, so later, when he had a family, had to get two minimum wage jobs to help support his family while his wife had to get another so she could add in more support. They couldn't get daycare, so the kids are babysat by a friend, but they still have to pay her cause she couldn't get by herself without that extra money.
But they're still poor, scrape for food, and their kids have to go to poor schools because schools are funded by local property taxes, which just helps to keep the poor schools poor and the rich schools rich, cause heaven forbid that anyone should have to put any money into a school that a child of theirs doesn't go to. It's not like it's an investment in the minds of tomorrow, afterall.
Because they get government help, however, this family of grasshoppers is seen as a blight on society. They're feeding off the tax money of those who deserve to keep all the money for themselves and are lazy, despite the fact that many of them work as much as they can or are actively trying to find jobs because the money they get from the government is laughable in the face of what it takes to support a family.
Meanwhile, the ants who cheat on their taxes are eating their dinners in their comfortable homes that have regular heat and are well built. They far outnumber the grasshoppers who cheat on their welfare, and cost the other ants a lot more money. But they're *ants* and they have well paying jobs and fruits to show for their labor, so that doesn't matter so much to the other ants. They can't be a true menace to society if they're not grasshoppers.
I'm sorry, but I find that "Modern version" to be a simplistic stretch of the imagination that's just out to promote that people on welfare are all happy and joyous and laugh at those who aren't. They do nothing but play games and the poor hardworking people have to give these lazy bugs money. That's laughable.
Maybe it's just me, but the whole "green bugs" thing makes me think that the writer is implying a race issue too.
And that doesn't even have me getting started on gangs, which are not all evil and rotten as the media would like you to think.
There's my take, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 06:02 am (UTC)This story smacks of blaming the poor for their own troubles, painting them as lazy do nothings who just suck off the public tit all their lives. Poor have nots get what they deserve, and it all comes down on the heads of the poor misunderstood haves. Let's not forget the part in the story where the grasshopper dies from a drug related incident, because poor people spend their money on booze and drugs and that's about it.
Looks like them nasty po' folks, along with the evil, horrible, killer gang members will be the end of this nation, and finally the free world. It certainly would have nothing to do with a society that denigrates the poor and unfortunate have nots and holds the haves on some pedestal upon which nothing bad is supposed to touch them, and when it does, it's all the fault of the dirty lower classes and the bleeding heart liberals who care about them and want to see them have the same chances as the haves. How obscene.
And I should probably resist my diatribe on gang members as well because I get way too ranty and emotional about it. Right now is a REALLY bad time for that.
But yeah. Not a fan of this version of the story. Sorry.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 05:25 pm (UTC)Agree with the naysayers
Date: 2010-01-08 05:26 pm (UTC)Sorry for dragging down your funny grasshopper story with cruel brutal reality, but the line "Be careful how you vote in 2010" smacks of pure conservatism (which is not inherently bad but is a little cold in this context).
The moral I'd like to see come out of this story is that we, the public, are suckers for an incomplete story. The media doesn't thrive on stories saying things are going as they should. We hear a story like this (in fictional form or in reality) and we immediately want to blame one or the other parties. Half of us say the grasshopper is a lazy bastard, and the other half say that the ant is a jerk for not sharing. Neither are right in the real world. We're all jerks and we're all lazy. We should all be sharing more and working together more but we should also be held a little more accountable for our mistakes. Fables can be black and white. But you can't often bring that clarity into the real world. It's much more complicated.
Matthew 2.0 - http://www.streem.info/matthew2/