The boys in the quarterly magazines

Apropos of nothing, really.

"With the Governor unavilable, I sat down in New Orleans to await his return and meanwhile try to build up a frame of reference, as the boys in the quarterly magazines would say. Politics is to the conversation of Louisiana what horse racing is to England's. In London, anybody from the Queen to a dustman will talk horses; in Louisiana, anyone from a society woman to a bellhop will talk politics. Louisiana politics is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the republic of Lebanon. The balance between Catholics in southern Louisiana and the Protestants in northern Louisiana is as delicate as that between the Moslems and the Christians in Lebanon and is respected by the same convention of balanced tickets. In Louisiana there is a substantial Negro vote-about a hundred and fifty thousand-that no candidate can afford to discourage privately or to solicit publicly. In the sister Arab republic, Moslem and Christian candidates alike need the Druse vote, although whoever gets it is suspected of revolutionary designs."---A.J. Liebling, The Earl of Louisiana, 1961.