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zoe
Citizen
Username: Zoe
Post Number: 278
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 12:15 pm: |     |
CLASSIC 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!
THE ESSEX COUNTY VERSION:
The ant lives in Maplewood, or Glenn Ridge, or Millburn, or South Orange, or Livingston and works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Irvington grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering Irvington 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.
"The Star Ledger," "The NY Times" CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN all show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the Maplewood ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
Liberal Maplewood is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a county of such wealth (Essex), this poor Irvington 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."
Paul Surovell stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house, and with help from #9Dream, Nohero and Ml1collects signatures, while the news stations film the group singing "We shall overcome" and “Kumbaya.”
Tom Daschle, Governor McGreevey, Joey D. and Sharpe James exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings that the Maplewood ant has gotten rich off the back of the Irvington grasshopper, and then 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.
Hitlary 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 New Jersey Supreme Court judges that rule in favor of the Irvington Grasshopper.
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.
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Mr. Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 288
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 12:35 pm: | |
Of course, straw man arguments are more appealing when you hyperbolize the characters, which you have succeeded in doing. I don't know any idealogue who truly believes that a person isn't responsible for his actions whatsoever. However, I have met people who seem to have little sense of societal responsibility. That is indeed a shame.
Tom Reingold
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Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 1860
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 12:59 pm: | |
I should feel flattered, I guess, that I turned up as a character in Zoe's little fantasy. I didn't know I had that effect on you. I had even written that I thought you made a lot of sense, in your post starting the "Encourage Personal Responsibility" thread, where you discussed how a sense of community is important to maintaining quality of life. So, maybe reading and listening to what people say is something to consider.
If MOL were a town, I guess the message which starts this thread would be the online equivalent of the neighbor who has the overgrown lawn, a trashed car in the front yard, and a barking pit-bull on a chain in the back. |
Mr. Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 291
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 1:01 pm: | |
Nohero, you mean MOL isn't a town?
Tom Reingold
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 1068
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 1:04 pm: | |
this isn't even good enough to be a troll, more like a garden gnome. |
Mr. Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 292
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 1:48 pm: | |
Speaking of personal responsibility...
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/6386294.htm
Tom Reingold
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#9Dream
Citizen
Username: 9dream
Post Number: 511
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 1:54 pm: | |
At least Zoe doesn't take personal responsibility for those tired old jokes she keeps upchucking.
I too am flattered to be one of her caricatures/stereotypes. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 125
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 2:15 pm: | |
Whenever I hear the phrase "personal responsibility" from a conservative, I know I am going to be blessed by some insightful and magical comments. I can't get enough. I'm glad they talk about it so much. I was just asking Tom Hayden and Hillary Clinton about it the other day over latte. None of us know what the phrase means, of course, but we agreed that we like the way it sounds. It's like listening to the Gypsy Kings - strange and magical. Great self-made men like our president must posess a lot of its powerful mojo. |
#9Dream
Citizen
Username: 9dream
Post Number: 512
Registered: 12-2002
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 2:21 pm: | |
And oddly, the aforementioned President has yet to take "personal responsibility" for the content of his own speeches..... |
Dave Ross
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 4924
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 2:22 pm: | |
He must be a ... a... a... LIBERAL!!! |
Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 1861
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 2:32 pm: | |
Mr. Reingold - I stand corrected. MOL is a town. I would guess it's equal parts Mayberry, Twin Peaks, and Cicely, Alaska. |
newjerz
Citizen
Username: Newjerz
Post Number: 43
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 3:01 pm: | |
While I disagree with you themp that the principle of taking personal responsibility is in some way a contrived value, I have to say that many (often conservatives) underappreciate the amount of discipline and willpower it takes to be personally responsible.
I would equate the problems that people in Irvington have for example with the problems that many people have with getting in shape. I am a college athlete, and every summer I say that I am going to work hard enough so that I can get some meaningingful playing time and every summer I start out strong and then the drinking beer with my friends, going to BBQ's, watching Yankees games, not to mention working a summer job inevitably sap me of my drive to really get in shape. Keeping the discipline for me is very difficult. Of course some people are blessed with that innate natural talent that they can goof off all summer and still be bigger, faster, and stronger than I am and thus will probably get more playing time than I will. Others have a more disciplined personality and thus have done what is needed to get time. Now, I am realistic enough to understand that ultimately it is my own fault that I am not playing and I can accept the fact that the immediate gratification that I got from doing whatever during the summer, ended up hurting me in the long run.
Now, I see some parallels between my athletic experience and what happens in places like Irvington. Are people there handicapped by worse educational systems, poorer public services, dysfunctional leaders? Sure. Would I do better if I had friends pushing me to work out with them or if I had gotten into the habbit of training hard from an early age, or if my natural athleticism was better? Absolutely.
But those handicaps we each face in our efforts to accomplish something don't excuse us in the end for not taking the steps necessary to be successful. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 126
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 3:27 pm: | |
It's not that it's a contrived value, it's that it has become a meaningless scarecrow of an idea. The notion that conservatives have special access to some font of virtue is tired and ridiculous. It reminds me of those odd little religious comic books that you used to see everywhere - ideas reduced to cartoonish simplicity and repeated endlessly. It is barely worth debating these things with someone who calls the junior senator from ny "Hitlary". We live in a crazy world of dittoheads. Our crime and poverty problems are hugely complicated, and as "special" to our system as other, happier aspects of American life. Only a fool pretends that they can easily assign the blame for our problems to their ideological enemies. There is this enormous thing called history that has brought us to where we are. |
Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 1862
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 4:22 pm: | |
The revised "Ant and the Grasshopper" story is an old e-mail staple. Among the varieties there's the "Al Gore Version", which dates from before the 2000 election, and a Right-Wing Christian Version. For some reason, they all include Kermit the Frog, who I never viewed as being very political.
Someone went to the trouble to write a revision to the revision (The Ant And The Grasshopper: Improved Version), which you should check out. It starts as follows:
quote: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."
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zoe
Citizen
Username: Zoe
Post Number: 279
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 4:31 pm: | |
"Our crime and poverty problems are hugely complicated." These are words only a Liberal could accept. Stop copping out.
The solution, follow the law, take responsiblity and get a job, any job. Stop thinking that you are overqualified, if you are not working, flip hamburgers, or make cold calls while you still can. everyone can get a job, unless they are insane, a criminal, or unwilling.
If everyone did that, then you'd see a large reduction in crime. Education, especially regarding addiction is an answer, but most of the real progress only comes when the patient is ready and even then few succeed.
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Flt
Citizen
Username: Flt
Post Number: 66
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 4:46 pm: | |
I would largely suspect that the people who need to hear your sermon aren't reading MOL, Zoe. Why not undertake some personal responsibility, print up your ascerbic posts and distribute them to the residents of Irvington, the poor, the homeless and the insane? I'm certain they will be most grateful to you. |
Mr. Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 296
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 28, 2003 - 4:50 pm: | |
Zoe, there's a chance that you are not aware of all the advantages you have had to come to where you are. And hearing me say this, you might think I'm saying you haven't worked hard. You probably have worked hard, but you had a foundation of support, knowledge, role models, and opportunities. Yes, you are responsible for your own success, but you owe gratitude for the things you've been given, too. It's more than others have been given.
Those who pull themselves up out of poverty deserve great admiration. They prove that it can be done. But I am not convinced it can be done on a grand scale. But I don't expect to win that argument, since we can't use history to prove your point or mine. Or can we? Has a society managed to eradicate poverty?
Tom Reingold
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themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 129
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2003 - 2:49 pm: | |
So a society-wide persistence in crime and poverty is curable on the individual level, provided that society now begins emphasizing individual responsibility. So we are all responsible for each other's individual responsibility level. So I am being irresponsible by not instilling individual responsibility in others. But maybe I'm too busy with my own fledgling sense of individual responsibility to get involved with other people's individual responsibility level(after all, it is individual). I'd rather give them level funding across all NJ public schools, or maybe I'd rather pander with some tuition money. I think people take care of their own sense of individual responsibility when they want or need to. I'm not going to be you responsibility peddlar, Zoe, you crypto-socialist. |
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