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On The Lighter Side Of Things We've all received those infamously recycled e-mail jokes. Whenever I see a gag told at the expense of a blonde, or read yet another lampoon of the ridiculous Clintons, I wonder if the sender cannot possibly know that in some cases the joke is five or six years old. There is an excellent alternative to deleting the junk, and that is embellishing and improving upon the original and sending it back into the stream. Below is a joke that most of us have received at least once over the years. I got it again yesterday from my father, and rather than send back some pleasantry or simply delete the mail, I decided to offer up my own version. The first two versions are the widely disseminated ones; the third is my own. May everyone have fun with all three.
I. The Ant And The Grasshopper: Original Version The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in 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.
II. The Ant And The Grasshopper: Modern Version The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in 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 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. --- Al Gore 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-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 had 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.
III. The Ant And The Grasshopper: Improved Version It turns out that the story about the aforementioned grasshopper and ant is all wrong. After tireless research, I happened upon the authentic version. Here it is: The ant, it turns out, inherited several formicaries. He is rich and battened, complacent and smug. He lives in a mansion, has "friends in all the right places." Several ZIP codes away there is a deformed grasshopper who struggles to find food and a suitable dwelling during winter. All his time is taken up trying to survive. One day the two bump into one another. The grasshopper asks for a helping hand, but our adorable little ant guffaws at him. "Get off your sorry keister and go work for it!" he says. "Don't expect others to extend the hand of charity." The grasshopper ambles away, dispirited and ashamed. The ant, on the other hand, is appalled that the grasshopper would be so brazen as to ask for a handout. He tells all his friends about what happened, and word travels very far very soon. The grasshopper is suddenly the center of national attention. --- CBS, ABC, and NBC get wind of the story but decide not to broadcast it. Top execs are concerned the story might fuel "class warfare"; after all, they have far more in common with the ant than with the grasshopper, and understandably fear that their viewers might have contrary sympathies. --- Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and all the other conservative preachers (are there any who aren't conservative?) get on the air and tell their followers that all the grasshopper needs is Jesus. "The problem," they bellow, "is a lack of values. That grasshopper is the product of a liberal culture that is nihilistic and libertine. No wonder he's hungry and homeless." --- William Safire, Alan Keyes, George Will, William Bennett, and innumerable other blowhards remind everybody that the ant is giving people jobs, is already overly taxed, has gotten along quite well in society because of considerable talent and awesome discipline. --- Meanwhile, legislators pass a bill that would end all assistance to grashoppers with deformities, citing the need to "end this vicious cycle of dependency" that has been built up because the proverbial "path to hell" has been "paved with good intentions." The grasshopper dies in early December, unable to brave the chills of winter. A home, prescription medicine, adequate food would have saved him. The ant had a good year: stocks went through the roof; real estate values soared; the Congress cut the top tax rate. He's so happy that he decides to throw a holiday ball in his mansion. The question of whom to invite is a rather easy one: his Rolodex is full of names and includes the Safires, the Wills, the Bennetts, network CEOs, even a few fiery preachers. The ball is absolutely, well, as the genteel would say, "divine". Everyone has a pleasant and rewarding time, and the soiree ends in a cheery chorus: "For he's a jolly good fellow; for he's a jolly good fellow; for he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny!"
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