The Ant and the Grasshopper, updated

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 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.

The MSM 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.' Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant 's house where the news stations' film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper. 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.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. On the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, Nancy and Harry stand before a wildly applauding group of liberals announcing that a new era of "Fairness" has dawned in America.

And the moral of this updated fable? Stop the madness. Stop big government. Vote for conservative candidates in 2010.

Jim Quinn, conservative co-host of the Quinn & Rose radio show, wrote an updated version of the ant and the grasshopper 15 years ago. An unknown admirer of Jim's put a spin for 2009 on that version of the fable.

Hat tip to Coffee Milk Conservative.