|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
>From: "Tana" <tana@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: LONG WAVES <LongWaves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 09:04:57 -0400
>Subject: The Modern Grasshopper
>Priority: normal
>X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d)
>Reply-To: LongWaves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Sender: owner-LongWaves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
>
>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 Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness" has
>dawned in America.
>
Charles Kaucher
-- Pickles make juicy bookmarks
|