In which the pond spends time with prattling Polonius, before getting an overload of craven Craven ...

 

Forget the talk of feuds and wannabe coups and Prigozhin versus Vlad the impaler ... the reptiles are a little slow on the news, and that can be saved for another day when the dust and the borscht has settled. It's only another way to avoid the truth from penetrating Russian skulls ...

Prigozhin’s declaration that Moscow fabricated false grounds for starting a war, with the implication that Russian officials involved in the conspiracy could necessarily be prosecuted as war criminals, matched almost exactly the established positions, of the White House and NATO, that Russia’s invasion of Russia was an unprovoked war of choice. (Kyiv Post)

Made for each other, war criminals and psychos, let them devour each other alive ... (or dead, no matter).

This being Sunday meditation day, instead the pond would like to talk of drag, with the pond startled to come across these lines in the Graudian the other day...

Conservative MPs and peers are mainstreaming hostility to drag events, which are increasingly being targeted by extremist groups as part of a wider anti-LGBTQ+ narrative, a report says.
Across the UK, at least 57 drag events have been targeted over the past year, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which has also documented how anti-LGBTQ+ messaging from the US is increasingly being imported to the UK.

Yes, yes, it's the Sunday meditation, and prattling Polonius, wanting to proclaim his victimhood and display his persecution complex, is waiting behind the arras, but please allow the pond a moment ...

Back in the day, drag was as British as smoked kipper ... and everybody did it ...

The pond can't begin to count the number of times it endured the Carry On comedies and the likes of Benny Hill.

It wasn't the frocks, it was the tits and bum style of the humour that left the pond cold.

Drag was always in fashion. Even the new age comedians, as the Pythons were once known, were deep into it. Don't worry about the hooligan Hell's Grannies. Remember that those famous words, "he's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy",  were delivered in drag...

And now suddenly drag isn't British to the bootstraps? Is nothing sacred? It's not like it's new. There was an interesting study of its development in panto here ...

...It was under the influence of the music hall stars that the pantomime dame began to be the star of the show. Cross dressing has been part of theatrical performances for centuries and the earliest ancestor of the pantomime dame can be traced back to the commedia and to the miracle plays of the middle ages and in Restoration comedy it was common to see men dressed as comical old women. Although Joseph Grimaldi often performed as a comical female character in his pantomimes until the turn of the century the dame role in many other productions was often small and the character not particularly interesting. One of the key figures in creating the popular character of the dame as we know it today was Dan Leno.
George Wild Galvin, better known as Dan Leno, was one of the biggest music halls stars of the 1880s. He was known for his monologues and comic songs and his characters were created from his observations on working class people in London, the most famous being his character Mrs Kelly. He played the dame at Drury Lane for sixteen year and his performance as Mother Goose strongly influenced the role of dame from then on.
There really is nothing like a dame. As characters in the commedia wore masks that were instantly recognisable to audiences who were familiar with that character, the elaborately painted face of a pantomime dame acts almost as a mask in the same way – we see a picture of a pantomime dame and even without being told we immediately know what character we are looking at. 
Originally the pantomime dame could be played by either a man or a woman and the tradition of the pantomime dame being played by man was not cemented until the end of the 1800s when performers such as Dan Leno elevated the role. Interestingly today we are seeing the re-emergence of the female dame, in particular there is a small but growing trend for the Ugly Sisters to be played by females rather than males.

There was even a snap of Leno, not quite drag in the modern style, more Regency ...

Now it's all to be swept away? Talk about Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and British conservatives forgetting their conservative roots ... next thing you know poor old Alexander Downer will be blasted for donning a stocking and high heels more than for setting off the mango Mussolini investigation.

What next, a campaign to establish that bullseyes are woke?

Sugar free? Dammit, woke is everywhere, even in haggis country. What's wrong with rotten teeth and running up a dentist's bill?

Back to drag, and the pond has long thought that the Catholic church was devised so that men could indulge in their love of frocks in a respectable way, and nothing wrong with that. 

No need to go all Barry Humphries when you could look stately and dignified in a frock ... and that at last brings the pond to prattling Polonius, and relax, frock wearing will get a mention, so that outing hasn't been entirely pointless...

Forget the wannabe coup, there's the ABC to denounce ... and that's way more important, as any follower of Polonius would know (did the pond mention that the ABC is a Polonius-free zone, even when he acts like a dog to get attention?) ...

Let the victimhood and the persecution complex display begin ...

Ah, endlessly, obsessively watching the ABC, even Q and A, and Polonius yet again not invited to beguile the audience, and then came the old victimhood ploy, and naturally the pond was inclined to double down ...

"All thinking men are atheists, " Ernest Hemingway 

When I think of all the harm [the bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. Oscar Wilde

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. Ambrose Bierce

There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. Gertrude Stein

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are skeptical. Friedrich Nietzsche

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Susan Ertz

God is love, but get it in writing. Gypsy Rose Lee

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just some random samples from the pond's toilet reading ...

But you don't have to visit the pond's toilet for the read ... you can just head off to the Internet Archive and get a pdf ... (offer only valid until offer is no longer valid).

The pond almost completely forgot about Polonius, but he's still here, prattling away, and here comes the shock horror at a little harmless cross-dressing ...

Never mind that poor old atheists have been persecuted for yonks - is there an Inquisition in the house? -and still, it'd take a brave atheist to put his head above water in certain countries, whether Islamic or barking mad fundamentalist Xian. As a southern gentleman in Texas might say, "we are all Taliban when it comes to women's rights ..."

These days the pond finds it all a hoot, all the more so that Polonius decided to go there, and talk about having fun in frocks. What's wrong with frocks? His hero loved frocks, the frockier the better ...

Here, have another sample, and you could be off reading more trifling tidbits, rather than suffering with Polonius ...

By golly, it's just like the hole in the bucket man, and that speculation about him having a heavily indexed set of quotes on the bedside table, ready to plunder and wheel out to show off his learning each Friday ...

As for Polonius, sadly the pond is already at the last indignant gobbet ... but there's still a large chunk of comedy stylings to enjoy ...

"It's not easy"?!

For a moment there the pond thought that Polonius might be channeling Kermit ...

"It's not that easy being a Catholic bigot ...

Having to spend each day berating others for being different

Pretending to be a dog and moaning about the ABC ..."

Not exactly Kermit, but on with the hunt for a bonus, and here the pond struck a bummer note, a bit like Vlad the impaler ...

Nope, not even in a nanosecond. There's nothing exciting about turning fifty and garrulous Gemma doing it is completely unremarkable. And there was another shot of Rowling, despite the pond warning the reptiles she was responsible for unutterable filth, vile heresy, necromancy and witchcraft ...

Pope's top exorcist says Harry Potter is 'king of darkness'

Pope Benedict XVI's chief exorcist, Rev. Gabriele Amorth,has called fictional wizard-in-training Harry Potter the "king of darkness, the devil."

Amorth made the statement about the star of the best-selling children's series by British author J. K. Rowling during an interview with Vatican Radiod uring the week.

"Magic is always a turn to the devil," said the Roman Catholic priest, according to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.

Amorth, who is also the president of the International Association of Exorcists, said the series contains many positive references to "the satanic art" of magic and makes no distinction between black and white magic.

The Harry Potter series has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide and four of the bookhave been made into films.

Rowling has revealed that two main characters will die in the seventh and last instalment, due to be published soon. It's expected to include a showdown between the teen wizard and his malevolent nemesis, Lord Voldemort.

"A price has to be paid, we are dealing with pure evil here," Rowling said during a British chat show interview.

Amorth compared the Potter character to dictators Stalin and Hitler, saying they were possessed by the devil.

"You can tell by their behavior and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That's why we need to defend society from demons," said Amorth, who has reportedly performed 30,000 exorcisms.

Pope also slammed Potter

Amorth's criticisms of Potter weren't the first to emerge from the Catholic Church, which has never been a fan of the series.

Benedict voiced his disapproval of the character and series before he became Pope in April 2005.

Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, he wrote a supportive letter in 2005 to the author of a book Harry Potter - Good or Evil? In it, sociologist Gabriele Kuby had argued that Harry Potter series distorts young people's ideas about the battle of good versus evil.

"It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly," Ratzinger told Kuby in his letter.

The pond can only reprint these warnings so many times before ennui sets in. Is Polonius aware that he places his soul in mortal danger each time he dabbles in the lizard Oz and keeps company with snaps of the deviant, heretical Rowling?

Speaking of appalling Catholics, the pond, with utmost disregard for sanity, decided to go with the craven Craven for its bonus... as an example that, with friends and allies like Prigozhin, who needs enemies?

Why the craven Craven, when the pond has tended to red card any reptile musing on the Voice, yet yesterday featured "Ned" and today bungs on a Craven do?

Well, it's a way of getting rid of the festering contempt that the pond feels for this Janus, this lickspittle back stabber, this betraying Judas.

Forget the humbug of the moment ... look at the past form.

There was the Daily Snail celebrating his treachery not so long ago ...

The pond refuses to link to the Snail, but this was the gist of it ...

...Professor Greg Craven, a constitutional lawyer who was one of the experts behind the original proposal of an Indigenous Voice, has slammed Mr Albanese's proposal as a 'con job'. 

He said: 'I think it's fatally flawed because what it does is retain the full range of review of executive action.

'This means the Voice can comment on everything from submarines to parking tickets. 

'We will have regular judicial interventions,' he warned.

Speaking to Ben Fordham on 2GB, Prof Craven explained how the Voice had been 'colonised' by 'left-leaning ideologues'.  

'It was originally a conservative proposal,' he said. 'It was really designed to recognise indigenous people without risking judicial activism. 

'Over the past year, it's really been colonised by left leaning ideologues from this community, trying to turn it from a model that was not run by the judges, to one that absolutely guarantees judicial intervention.

'The reality is that you will have a situation where any person who wants to create difficulty for a government over its decisions can now end up going to the High Court.

'It will be very, very difficult for government to operate either because it will be constantly delayed and tied up in knots, or indeed because the courts end up intervening directly in decisions.'

Opinion polling has indicated Australians are very divided on whether to support the referendum, and Prof Craven thinks a 'No' vote is inevitable. 

Writing in the Australian, he said: 'It is a ruthless con job. It is aimed at the Australian people as a whole and an adoring media barely literate in constitutional reality.

'It puts the final bullet through the head of the referendum. The polls already show a sick referendum. It is now terminal.'

The professor also warned that the inclusion of 'draft principles' were another source of alarm as it could lead to Australians voting on the referendum without specifically knowing what areas the Voice could apply to. 

'The idea is that instead of actual detail or architecture for the referendum, we are meant to be assuaged by motherhood statements so vague that they mean nothing,' Prof Craven wrote. 

'Look at Albanese's enunciated principles: the voice will be proactive, representative, chosen by local communities, transparent and cooperative.

'What on earth does this actually mean? It could cover any commonwealth body from the Australian Defence Force to the ABC.'

Speaking to ABC, he added: 'I'm not pretty frustrated, I'm incredibly frustrated. I think the Government has made multiple errors of process here, one of which is a total lack of clarity. 

'So, this alteration was designed in a black box, we don't know who designed it, now it's been revised in a black box, there's been no attempt to engage wider opinion.

'And I think the total disaster is we've already got a referendum that's heading south in the polls, even before this it was describing the typical arc of a losing referendum. 

'Now with this, I think, firstly, you're gonna have a bad proposal and that's gonna be even worse for the referendum.

'But the most potent argument, surely for the 'no' side, will be, "Even your own Attorney-General and your own Solicitor-General said this proposal should not go forward in the words of executive government, and now you're trying to sell us that." I mean, if the 'no' case needed another argument, it's got an absolute humdinger.'

Now the mealy mouthed Janus is speaking out of his other mouth, all pious and caring ...

Advance? Look at the damage done. The West Australian was another to notice (no link, hard paywall), as recently as 1st June 2023 in Voice to Parliament: Legal expert slams Liberal Party for ‘misuse’ of quotes on anti-Voice website.

A leading conservative constitutional expert has blasted the Liberal Party for plastering his quotes on its anti-Voice website — without mentioning he supports a Yes vote in the referendum.

Greg Craven told The West he was “staggered” the Liberals had chosen to “misuse” his quotes on the newly launched website.

The Liberal Party-hosted “Labor’s Voice” website features comments Professor Craven made during a radio interview after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled the proposed constitutional change.

“I think it’s fatally flawed because what it does is retain the full range of review of executive action,” he told Sydney’s 2GB radio on March 24.

“This means the Voice can comment on everything from submarines to parking tickets … we will have regular judicial interventions.”

Professor Craven has continued to express his deep concern about the risks of allowing the Voice to speak to all parts of Government, but has made clear it won’t stop him from voting Yes in the referendum.

The former Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor has a long history with the Voice concept and sat on the panel of legal experts that advised the Government on the constitutional amendment.

When The West contacted him about the website on Thursday, Professor Craven strongly rebuked the Liberals.

“That is completely misleading unless they also put next to it that I am a supporter of Yes and publicly indicated that I will campaign for it,” he said.

“I am staggered that they would misuse that quote.

“And they know that.”

The Liberal Party doubled down its use of the quote when The West alerted it to Professor Craven’s concerns.

“If Professor Craven wants to risk a proposal that he thinks is ‘fatally flawed’ and will mean ‘we will have regular judicial interventions’, that’s a matter for him,” a spokesman said.

“But to quote Professor Craven again, we think that ‘with constitutions, you don’t take risks’.”

Well yes, the double speak with forked tongue man could hardly complain ...

The Westralian stuck in a snap of the smirking, smug, craven Craven just to emphasise his role ...

And suddenly butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of the smug, smirking humbug ...

Emotionalism and hoopla? What about treachery and duplicitous deceit?

Shireen Morris had this to say in the May 2023 issue of The Monthly under the header Keeping one’s word on the voice (sorry paywall).

She discussed three figures, and their contributions, with the Craven one of them ...

..Noel Pearson and I met Craven in 2013, after he attacked the Cape York Institute’s previous proposal for a racial non-discrimination guarantee in the Constitution as a “one clause bill of rights”. We sought common ground with the right. Discussion with Craven led us to convene several meetings with constitutional conservatives at ACU. We sought an alternative proposal for Indigenous constitutional recognition that could win both Indigenous and decent conservative support.

Building on decades of Indigenous advocacy, the idea of a constitutionally guaranteed voice originated in 2014 through collaboration with Leeser, Craven, constitutional law professor Anne Twomey and lawyer Damien Freeman. This collaboration is recounted in my 2018 book, Radical Heart. The idea was that, instead of amending the Constitution to empower the High Court to decide what was good or bad law or policy for Indigenous people, the Constitution could guarantee Indigenous communities themselves a fairer say in laws and policies made about them.

This was a political rather than litigious solution to the torment of Indigenous powerlessness. The voice was a “radical centre” idea that reconciled Indigenous aspirations for empowering constitutional change with conservative concerns to uphold the Constitution.

This group debated every word of the proposed amendment until each member was satisfied it would guarantee Indigenous peoples an advisory voice in their affairs, while respecting parliamentary supremacy and minimising legal uncertainty. Twomey published the agreed drafting in The Conversation in 2015. The most relevant part (given current debate about executive government) provided that the proposed body “shall have the function of providing advice to the Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Compare this to the amendment now before the joint select committee on the referendum. It provides that “the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”.

In recalling this history, Craven’s memory is selective about the inclusion of “executive government”. Contrary to his recent assertions, advice to the executive was not a new addition inserted by “Indigenous radicals”. It was part of the proposal he helped devise. This is why, in 2014, Craven advocated in The Australian for a body “charged with counselling parliament and government on indigenous matters”. He argued that “Government would be empowered, not disempowered” by its “timely and wise counsel”.

In 2021, in a submission to the voice co-design process, Craven, with Freeman, praised the drafting they co-created – which included advice to the executive – as “legally sound”. “It … would not undermine the supremacy of parliament or give rise to uncertainty in the High Court’s interpretation of the Constitution,” they declared. Even in January this year, in a paper for the Centre for Independent Studies, the pair explained how this drafting provided “the basis for the Prime Minister’s simplified drafting in 2022”.

It is only in recent months that Craven started claiming that advice to the executive would inflame litigation, clogging up everything from decisions on nuclear submarines to lighthouses. First, he denied that executive government was ever in the original proposal he co-created. Then he claimed the reference was “only vague” – which it was not. Then, on April 14, Craven told the joint select committee that the amendment he co-created started as a nice “icy pole” but had somehow morphed into “cyanide-flavoured icy pole”. When asked to explain why the original drafting was sound whereas the present drafting is not (despite their clear similarity), he gave no coherent answer.

Craven’s claims have been comprehensively refuted by experts. It is clear the main change precipitating Craven’s shift is political. A Labor government was elected in May 2022. Suddenly it became the “Albanese amendment” – not a conservative amendment. On April 15, Craven claimed his support for the voice “faltered” because he “watched the Albanese government push it in problematic directions”. In truth, tribalism kicked in. This would not be happening if the same amendment was being put by a Liberal government.

Inspired by Leeser’s resignation from the front bench to advocate a “Yes” vote, Craven now says he will advocate “Yes” too, even if his preferred changes don’t succeed. He is apparently livid his hyperbolic lines about the amendment are being used by Dutton’s “No” case. Craven’s defence for his recent behaviour is that he is not a “responsible or a reasonable man”.

Back to butter melting in mouth mode ...

At this point, the contempt the pond was feeling was palpable and perhaps that's why the reptiles slipped in a snap to break the mood ...

Has anybody better impersonated a wrecking ball, and then pretended he did nothing?

Whenever the craven Craven leads with that sort of sentimental tear-jerking blather, the pond is ineluctably reminded of the hard man ...

Exactly as Morris wrote.

Is it possible to recover from this sort of disgraceful flip-flopping? Probably not, when all you've got in the Janus cupboard is a generous supply of crocodile tears ...

It's as if he thinks if he doesn't mention it, it never happened, but it did and too many times to be dismissed as a mild aberration, a thought bubble that would get popped in time ...

The pond doesn't have the heart to quote all of it ... but the point is that it's all about him, and very little to do with the Voice, more about his piety and astonishing expertise, and little do with Aboriginal people ... as you might expect from a counterfeit, phony-baloney, mealymouthed double-faced Janus, now trying to pretend everything is suddenly ship-shape ...

Was it so long ago that he was flailing away? Was it so long ago that he was pronouncing it terminal?

Others slammed his alarmism ... as in a 14th April 2023 piece, ‘Too silly for words’: Experts reject claims Voice will trigger deluge of legal action:

...Constitutional conservative and law professor Greg Craven, a long-time supporter of the Voice, claimed such outcomes were “entirely possible”, and argued executive government covered the expanse of the bureaucracy “from cabinet down to the lighthouse keeper’s bulb polisher”.

“This is not simply about preventing litigation. It’s about inviting litigation. It’s about trailing your coat with imprecision, knowing you will get litigation and that’s what’s proposed here. Yes of course it can be litigated, but you don’t need to make it so unclear that it will be litigated to death,” Craven said.

But Craven was in the minority at Friday’s hearing, departing from the views held by other constitutional law academics Anne Twomey and George Williams, who worked alongside him on a legal experts’ panel advising Indigenous leaders on the drafting of the amendment.

“There is no realistic possibility whatsoever that this will give rise to a deluge of litigation. The words don’t support it,” Williams said.

Pique, pride, vanity, narcissist navel gazing and fluff gathering and an endless attention-seeking carry on ... what a relief to get to the last sickening mouthful of butter in the mouth ...

What a contemptible man he is ... and with friends like these, the Voice has no need for Captain Potato as an enemy. The call is coming from a former resident, once upon a time inside the house ...

And with that, the pond can end with a couple of off topic cartoons, a reminder of things that never get mentioned, except in a craven way, in the lizard Oz ...