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To: Mark Fowler who wrote (94079)2/19/2000 9:53:00 AM
From: H James Morris  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 164684
 
Mark, would you describe yourself as an Ant or Grasshopper type?
>
Subject: The Ant and The Grasshopper

> 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.

> > >>>
>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 and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to video of the ant in his
comfortable home with a table filled with food.
> > >>>
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that,
in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed
to suffer so?
> > >>>
Then a representative of the NAAGB (National Association of
Green Bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with
"green bias," and makes the case that the grasshopper is the
victim of 30 million years of greenism.
> > >>>
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and
everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."
> > >>>
Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on
the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather that
they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has
been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited
unfairly during the Reagan summers, or as Bill refers to it,
the "Temperatures of the 80's."
> > >>>
Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings
that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper,
and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay
his "fair share."
> > >>>
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism
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 moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's
between 1:30 and 3pm when there are no talk shows scheduled.
> > >>>
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's in,
which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around
him since he doesn't know how to maintain it.
> > >>>
The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the
grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are
showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group
of politicians announcing that a new era of "fairness" has
dawned in America.