LOL The Ant and the Grasshopper

[Finglefinn]

I just got this email today. I thought it was funny. I'm sure some of you won't.


The Ant and the Grasshopper

TRADITIONAL 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 the ant is 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.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!


MODERN UPDATED 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 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 warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC 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, John Kerry & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and 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.

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 Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. 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 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.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008.

[Klast Brell]

Love that thinly veiled racism.

[Embar Angylwrath]

How so, Klast?

[Partha]

I'm not surprised you don't see it.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Explain it to me.

[Finglefinn]

Racism? Huh?

[Harlowe]

Guys seriously, you didn't catch how tacky this part was.....

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."

And really the entire rest of the story, the grasshopper is being presented as a character with the most racist black stereotypes.

Eesh, how do you not see the blatant racism in that story?

[Embar Angylwrath]

It could only be equated with racism if you and others feel Jesse Jackson is only involved with the plight of black people, or that black people are warts on the ass of society. That white people couldn't possibly be involved with this type of entitlement attitude.

Me, I saw it as a commentary on entitlement whores, regardless of ethnicity.

So who does that make racist?

[Jarochai Alabaster]

Me, I saw it as a commentary on entitlement whores, regardless of ethnicity.

That's pretty much what I got out of it.

But really, anyone calling anyone racist anymore has less meaning than bringing up Nazis.

[Ddrak]

Well, aside from being at least half a decade old, there have been some amusing responses to it...

If this were truly a fable where the ant was a Republican it would go more like this: First of all, you don't believe that the ant would be doing any hard work, do you? All hard work would be done by the grasshopper. And at a very low wage, I might add. You see, the Republican ant busted up the grasshopper union leaving the grasshopper to work at a much lower wage. This means that the mother grasshopper has to work just to bring in the same salary that the father grasshopper used to bring in alone. Then one day the Republican ant decides that even without the unions, wages were still too high and things like health insurance and safety regulations for his workers were eating into his profits and bonus packages, so he decides to move his anthill across the border where he can get Mexican beetles to do the work for dung.

Across the border the Republican ant is free to plunder the resources of another country and reap wild profits without having to worry about such foolish things as living wages, laws to protect the environment, safety regulations and child labor laws. This, of course, leaves the grasshopper without any meaningful work and he is forced into degrading service work ("would you like fries with that caterpillar, sir?") or playing the lottery. Some can't find work at all and end up homeless or sometimes the grasshopper feels hopeless and turns to drugs or crime, but that's okay, too because now the ant has more contracts to reward some of his biggest campaign donors in the flourishing new prison industrial complex industry. But wait, something's wrong. Even after moving his anthill across the border to exploit cheap labor and natural resources the ant is still losing money leg over claw. How can this be happening? After all, the ant is working the capitalist, free enterprise system full throttle, which means everything should be hunky-dory. Instead, the stock market is a free fall, 3 million jobs have been lost in the first 3 years under an ant administration, the economy is in a recession, the country is 2 trillion dollars in the hole, the states are broke, there’s no money for schools or infrastructure, Veterans of Foreign Wars benefits, nor any other vital social program. Of course, none of this stops the ant from getting huge tax breaks. And you would think with all of the tax breaks, privatization, corporate welfare and deregulation the ant's businesses would be thriving, wouldn't you? - You would be wrong. Because of mismanagement, corruption, malfeasance, and crooked Ponzi schemes the ant has run many multi-billion dollar corporations into the ground, screwed the grasshopper out of his life savings, stored the money away in offshore banking accounts and ran to Congress for a bailout, which will be paid with the grasshopper's taxes.

Not that I believe either side, but it's amusing rhetoric both ways.

[Trollbait]

The only way to twist this as racist is if you think "grosshopper" and "ant" are races instead of species.

And if you think that then there really is no help for you, is there?

[Partha]

God forbid one should read an allegory any way other than literally.

[Embar Angylwrath]

I'm still waiting on Partha and Klast to explain why they thought it was racist.

[Partha]

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome."

Clearly a jibe against blacks.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs

A definite slam against 'affirmative action'.

and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

LOLZ NOT ONLY DO WE SLAM THE BLACKS BUT ALSO SINGLE HOOKER MOMS LOLZ

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

I SHOULDN'T have to spell this one out for you. Well, maybe. You're playing dumb. Or maybe not playing.

[Embar Angylwrath]

If you think that Jesse Jackson is equated with only blacks, you're racist.

The hiring of green bugs could have been referring to union shops (another entitlement insititution), but you automatically assume its targeted against blacks, which is a racist position. You're a racist.

You think only blacks and single moms are on welfare.. you're a racist and a sexist.

You think only blacks have drug-infested 'hoods. You're a racist.

Congratulations, you've just exposed yourself as a racist, elitist, sexist asshole!

[Partha]

If you think that Jesse Jackson is equated with only blacks, you're racist.

If you have any citations of Jesse Jackson leading a prayer vigil and singing 'We Shall Overcome' for a white victim, you may produce them now.

The hiring of green bugs could have been referring to union shops (another entitlement insititution)

What planet do you live on?

You think only blacks and single moms are on welfare.. you're a racist and a sexist.

Then explain why using single welfare moms guarantees the 'ant' will lose.

You think only blacks have drug-infested 'hoods. You're a racist.

What part of 'the once peaceful neighborhood' where 'peaceful' obviously refers to 'not having grasshoppers' do you not get?

Oh, wait. This is you reaching to justify yourself. <Gilda Radner>Nevermind</Gilda Radner>

[Embar Angylwrath]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... pe=special

Jackson making the case of correcting social inequity based on economic priciples instead of racial lines. No singing, but you get the picture. Obviously you think Jackson can ONLY be involved with black issues... racist.

You think unions DON'T have entitlement attitudes???? What planet do YOU live on, sirrah?

I have no idea why using "single welfare moms" will "guarantee" the ant will lose. Why don't you explain it for me?
You brought up the single welfare moms, not me.

Ever see a "once-peaceful" neighborhood fall to gangs? Notice I didn't say "black gangs", which you're obvioulsy assuming are the only type of gangs out there. Or that the influx of blacks destroys a neighborhood. Another example of your racist attitude.

You (and Klast) are a greaet example of how the left is brainwashed into thinking that blacks are the automatic target, singled out for special treatment (which, like affirmative action, is inherantly racist in itself). Shame on you for condeming blacks to back of the bus in leftist politics, always separate, always treated differently.

[Klast Brell]

Clearly Embar is fooled by the thin veil.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Clearly Klast is in denial about his ingrained racism.

[Barious]

Clearly, neither of you understand the definition of the word "clearly."

-Barious