RE: Off-Topic: Fable

["Hegge, Roy" <Roy_Hegge@adc.com>]

Hey Greg,

The modern version sounds like a recap of 'Atlas Shrugged'.  In that book the ants found a new field, without grasshoppers, and started over again.

Roy

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Peisert [mailto:gpeisert@jamesgregory.com]
Sent: Friday, February 26, 1999 8:48 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list NOPRIVACY
Subject: FW: Off-Topic: Fable


All analogies are weak in some respects. And I agree that there are many 
cases to which the following analogy does not apply. Unfortunately, there 
are also many cases to which it does.

--Greg


                            "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 NAGB (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 was 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.
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 3:00 p.m. 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
Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness"
has dawned in America.