June 19, 2017 - Fractured Fairy Tale:  The Tortoise and the Hare

Below is the result of my monthly writer's club prompt.  This exercise was to take a Fairy Tale and fracture it and make it different.  I struggled with this.  Took me a few weeks just to research dozens of fairy tales that I knew and read up on ones that I didn't know. I tossed out a half dozen false starts. Finally I got a glimmer of an idea and I ran with it. 

I tested it on a good friend and my brother who both got a good chuckle out of it so I am sharing it with the world.

A Note of caution:  If you don't like politics - I suggest you pass this by.

The Tortoise and the Hare

In the fall of 2016, there was “A Presidential Election” which took place in The United States of America between a Tortoise and Hare. Every four years this Presidential Race takes place in an effort to maintain the democracy of the United States of America.

This race started with a debate cycle among 17 Tortoises and 2 Hares.  After various contestants dropped out, the race was reduced to one Tortoise and one Hare, namely Trump Tortoise and Hillary Hare.

Trump Tortoise and Hillary Hare competed in various televised debates with questions posed by every-day citizens as well as TV commentators.

During the debates, Trump Tortoise nicknamed Hillary Hare as Crooked Hillary and Hillary Hare called all Trump Tortoise supporters “Deplorables.”  Vitriol and divisive mud-slinging was had by all including the biased media.

Trump Tortoise ran on the slogan “Make America Great Again”.  His sea of followers wore red ball caps stamped with his slogan and came out in the thousands.  Meanwhile, Hillary Hare’s slogan called for their vote on the premise of being the First-Woman-as-President and “I’m with HER” and “Stronger Together” as her slogans.  Her artwork was a red arrow overlapping a large blue H that too many Tortoise supporters assumed meant “stage right exit” from reality.

Trump Tortoise slowly plodded across the entire United States, from North to South from Coast to Coast and he particularly paid attention and plodded slower in the “Fly over” section of the country – the center of the country where the “elites” and “liberals” were not so densely concentrated.

Hillary Hare hopped and skipped over the fly-over area and stopped briefly only where she was “adored”.  Her platform was vague to the common man.

During the last weeks of the election, the FBI brought up, again, the criminal investigation of her missing emails and illegal server. Hillary Hare quipped, “You mean wipe, like with a cloth?” thinking her humor would sooth the voters, but it had the opposite effect. Meanwhile, Trump Tortoise followers loudly chanted “Lock her Up, Lock her UP” at his rallies.

Hillary Hare supporters claimed Tortoise Trump was a misogynist which is a fancy word for woman-hater.  Hillary Hare claimed that women should have complete control over their bodies including the right to kill their unborn child.   Many of the evangelical leaning  Trump Tortoise supporters were “anti-abortion” and felt that the Hillary Hare supporters use of “Pro Choice” was a euphemism for Pro-abortion.

During the final days of the election process, Hillary Hare hopped around to her favorite spots while Trump Tortoise plodded along to those states where the “forgotten man” lived.

The late night race results showed Trump Tortoise, who had plodded to each and every electoral checkpoint, had accumulated more “electoral votes" than elusive Hillary Hare’s hopping in and out of checkpoints so fast that the electoral college wasn't swayed to her side.  The election finals showed Hopping Hillary Hare miscalculated by obtaining only 232 electoral votes while Plodding Trump Tortoise collected 306 electoral votes.

The Moral of the story: Hopping Hillary Hare had missed the point: You don’t win by Popular Vote you win by obtaining 270 or more electoral votes.