Is it too soon for a Christmas Story ?
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 shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
THE END
THE ‘Progressive’ 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. So far, so good, eh?
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 less fortunate, like him, are cold and starving.
The “news” media shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food.
Americans are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty. The ACLU, CAIR and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant's house.
NPR, interrupting a Gay-Lesbian cultural festival special from San Francisco with breaking news, broadcasts the demonstrators singing "We Shall Overcome."
Jesse Jackson yells in an interview with Chris Matthews that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share".
In response to polls, the US Congress drafts the Economic
Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant's taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers.
Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed
retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
The “news” media later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant's food, though Spring is still months away, while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he hasn't bothered to maintain it.
Inadequate government funding is blamed, Jimmy Carter and Maya Angelou are appointed to head a commission of inquiry that will cost $10,000,000.
The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose. The Washington Post and the New York Times blame it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity.
The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching the area’s multicultural diversity, who promptly set up a methamphetamine operation and terrorize the community.
THE END
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