Ant & Grasshopper Revisited

...or maybe the grasshopper could only get a minimum wage job and couldn't afford the house. Maybe the ant was born the right side of the railroad tracks and got a better education at a school which wasn't vandalised and plagued by drugs gangs and maybe his daddy was rich and paid for him to go through university.

Yep there are the lazy, undeserving poor. But there are also lazy undeserving rich who inherit their wealth or get it handed to them on a plate; equally there are hard-working, deserving poor people.

 

Needs to be updated. Daschle is no longer in Congress. Peter Jennings is, sadly, dead.

 

I can hear Aesop turning in his grave.
Leave the fable telling to the pros.

 

That is a racist coded stereotype of African-Americans (and a rather poorly disguised one at that) that insinuates not only are they all lazy(and incapable of caring for the nice things they do get), while whites are all honest and hard working but that because of this, they deserve all the poverty and contempt they have gotten, while the rich deserve all they have, and all our tax money is being wasted on the undeserving poor.
(This version even omits the reference to the "NAAGB" in the original version I saw in a small upstate NY fundamentalist "Christian" newpaper. However, "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" is new, and further ilustrates the obvious intention of this.

Once again, the message is that the problem in this country now is that big bad government is giving all our hard earned money to these lazy destructive minorities who don't work, and try to get our hard earnings for nothing at all. We are all good, and they are all bad. This quadruple slap in the face is one of the most racially insulting pieces of propaganda I've ever seen, and it was in the pages, not of Aryan Nation, but Christian literature. I don't know of any welfare people who have gotten rich from that system, but the rap stars and producers, plus sports stars (who all got rich off of the 'legitimate' capitalistic system which values entertainment and showers it with millions) all keep their multimillion dollar estates as nice as any rich white, so just what is this statement saying? One website I saw this on (http://fam_bible_assoc.tripod.com/Poli/MyRpt-7 by a Particular Baptist), which advocates the Confederate constitution, cites this in a plea for secession.
It can be really hard to tell where this movement ends, and the Christian Identity begins. Yet many conservatives, including many of these same people spouting this stuff, keep screaming "why is everyone still whining about racism?"!

http://members.aol.com/etb700/rightwing3.html

 

Methinks someone has been to DEOMI.

 

Yeah, but that's basically who is assumed to be the lazy (After all, "tax money spent on welfare" is what this rhetoric is aimed at, and welfare is assumed by the majority to be mostly a minority thing). This plus the rest of the code language (Jesse Jackson/"We Shall Overcome", the omitted "NAAGB", "dead in a drug-related incident "gang...who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood", and who in general people claim are cheated by "economic inequity") used for minorities.

(What is "DEOMI"?)

 

The problem is, in issues like this, in going after the liberals, the rhetoric often assaults (even if in an indirect, or subtle fashion) those imagined to be the beneficiaries of the liberal programs.
If you want to go after the liberals, why have an illustration that spends so much time on a group not necessarily liberal, and marked by color references and certain leaders specifically associated with the people? But it figures as "tax money wasted on minorities" is the central focus on many people's whole beef with the liberals in the first place.

 

Why vilify any group, blacks, liberals, conservatives, soccer moms with bleached hair, etc. etc. etc.

Everyone is a human being. I appreciate political humor, but saying, "Oh, I didn't mean to denigrate blacks, only liberals" isn't very nice either.

"Love thy neighbor" - Jesus

 

Ouch.....
Me thinks I won't post my thoughts here.....
Love Thy Neighbor for sure!

 

Oh grow up and knock it off or I'm gonna send you guys to your rooms without desert!!

 

That's no punishment. They have video games.

 

And a stash of M&Ms hidden in the sock drawer.

 

The story needs to be updated a little. Peter Jennings left this world on August 7, 2005.