[lynx42]

Two Different Versions .... Two Different Morals


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OLD 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!





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MODERN VERSION

The ant

works hard in the
withering heat and the rain 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

he is cold and starving.


Channels 7, 9 and 10,the ABC and SBS

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.



Australia 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.'

Acorn stages a demonstration in
front of the ant's house where
the news stations film the group singing,

'We shall overcome.'

Cardinal George Pell then has the
group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.


Prime Minister Gillard
condemns the ant and blames
John Howard, Robert Menzies, Capt
James Cook, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Bob Brown exclaims in an interview on Today Tonight

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, Labor in conjunction with the
Greens draft 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
and given to the grasshopper.



The story ends as we see the grasshopper

and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the

ant’s food while the government house
he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,

crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.


The ant
has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

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 ramshackle, once prosperous and once
peaceful, neighbourhood.



MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2010.