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Voltron
May 18, 2004, 12:12 PM
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

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 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. MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN 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. 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. Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings 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 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: Don't vote for the Poodle.

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html



Desertrat
May 18, 2004, 03:32 PM
Naw, the moral of the story is, "Don't let the (Bleeping) grasshopper know what you're doing."

Correlative word of warning: Other people's jealousy can burn your billfold.

(Had an Austintatious city planner type tell me one time when we were discussing my plans to subdivide some land into larger-than-ususal lots, "But, it's not *right* for them to have so much land!" I guess it wasn't right for me to fatten my billfold off of willing buyers, either.)

Shame that pore ol' grasshopper couldn't get him a day job...

'Rat

miloblithe
May 18, 2004, 06:18 PM
Reasoning by analogy is a sure sign of having a weak argument.

Desertrat
May 18, 2004, 11:11 PM
Quien sabe? Maybeso, maybeno, Milo. Analogies can be fun, though. The ant/grashopper thing is drawn from real life in modern America; the analogy is merely an effort to make a point with a bit of a chuckle instead of crying...

:), 'Rat

miloblithe
May 18, 2004, 11:41 PM
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the ant/grasshopper thing is not drawn from real life in modern America. The ant/grasshopper thing is drawn from a old fable and ascribed onto modern America.

I agree that analogies are lots of fun, and enjoy making them too. But trying to argue by analogy almost never makes sense, not matter how good it may sound.

But, to be overspecific (as I am) Voltron wasn't making an argument, he was just trying to provoke a discussion. So fair enough.

Desertrat
May 19, 2004, 07:55 AM
:) Aesop? I get rusty about stuff I learned fifty or sixty years ago...

Thing is, there's just enough truth in stuff like that, that somebody creates an analogy. Jesse Jackson has played the race card against various corporations to get money. People on this board have expressed antipathy toward the wealthy merely for being wealthy. And I regularly see people who fit the grasshopper pattern as to their behavior, while expressing resentment against the successes of "ants".

I dunno. My primary gripe, often, is the implication that "all" have some characteristic and the notion of "some" is ignored. Doesn't matter whether one is talking about grasshopper types, Islamics or businessmen.

'Rat

mactastic
May 19, 2004, 08:20 AM
:) I dunno. My primary gripe, often, is the implication that "all" have some characteristic and the notion of "some" is ignored. Doesn't matter whether one is talking about grasshopper types, Islamics or businessmen.

'Rat

Don't forget progressives and conservationists! ;) We get lumped into one big ball too.

Oh and don't forget, we've also heard people express hatred of the poor just because they are poor. Things go both ways.

radhak
May 19, 2004, 08:25 AM
Quien sabe? Maybeso, maybeno, Milo. Analogies can be fun, though. The ant/grashopper thing is drawn from real life in modern America; the analogy is merely an effort to make a point with a bit of a chuckle instead of crying...

:), 'Rat

agreed. i thought that story was pretty fun too, and but for that moral at the end, might have been enjoyed by everybody ;)