Recently, I published an article Bad Blog Quoting, where I complained about how some bloggers—Brad DeLong in particular—create articles that are simply quotes without any value added. They could, as Mark Thoma often does (and as often does not), just provide the link. I still think this is a bad idea. For example, yesterday, DeLong posted William Hazlitt’s Political Essays: The Character of Mr. Burke, a 2,000 word essay, in its entirety. It is well worth reading, by the way. However, a link and a synopsis would have been better. Yet there is another side of the story.

Yesterday, I found out that the ventriloquist Nina Conti was the daughter of actor Tom Conti. All I really wanted to do was put up some hilarious video with Nina and Monk—the missing link that proves depression is our natural state. But I couldn’t just do that. Posting videos alone is just the same as quoting. Of course, I could just have added something like, “I just found out that Nina Conti is the daughter of delightful Scottish actor Tom Conti. Here she is performing with Monk.” That thought even occurred to me. But unfortunately, we just don’t do things like that around here. It’s against the style guide! (But not, apparently for Curiously Clever which consistently does whatever the hell it wants.)

So I wrote an article about the Best Actor category of the 1983 Academy Awards: Nina Conti Not Nominated for Oscar. Why? Because her father was nominated that year. Also, I got my wires crossed, thinking that Tom Conti was nominated in 1980, which would allow me to rant about how much better John Hurt and Robert Duvall were than the winner: Robert De Niro. Even without this, however, there is the kernel of a good article here. All I had to do was spend an hour or two on it. You can see it in the article as it stands: not only was Nina Conti’s father nominated for an Oscar, but she starred in For Your Consideration, which is about the ridiculousness of Oscar hysteria. As it stands, it is all kernel and no article.

So Brad DeLong has a point. Not that I plan to changed a damn thing. And to prove it, here’s another video of Nina Conti, looking kind of pregnant.