The old version:  The ant works hard in withering heat all summer long, builds his house and lays up supplies for the winter.  The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.  Winter comes and the ant is warm and well fed.  The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.  The moral of the story:  Be responsible for yourself.

The new "modern" version:  The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, builds his house and lays up supplies for the winter.  The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.  Winter comes and now we see the following:

• 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..
• CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC all 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 it 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...'
• Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome.
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper, while he damns the ants.
• President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight..
• Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in interviews 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 Green Czar 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 just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper hasn't maintained 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, previously prosperous and peaceful neighborhood. Next, the entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world down with it.