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 PC 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. TV News shows up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. Viewers are 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 Newsline with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
The Minister for Social Services makes a special guest appearance on an hour long Reality Special to tell the weeping audience 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 Conservatives summers.
The Minister explains 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 Combined Trade Unions draft the “Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act” retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
This is immediately rushed through the house under urgency together with a bill deregulating the practise of advanced and general medicine, prescription of drugs and general dentistry in favour of midwives. 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 . An all night vigil outside his home on the night before eviction chants “shame, shame, shame ” throughout the night, (but in a culturally sensitive manner).
The Crown Law Office represents the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of judges appointed from a list of single-parent welfare mums 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 the Prime Minister before a wildly applauding group of politicians announcing that a new era of “fairness” has dawned.