A.J Liebling: Tummler

A.J. Liebling is remembered as a critic of the press. He claimed he could write faster and better than his colleagues, which reminds me of the muckraker Seymour Hersh.

“I am a better American than 99% of the guys in the White House,” Hersh said.

And if I can draw those similarities, I see that Liebling preferred to approach news for what it was. It was not about puffery or trend but about withholding personal judgment and informing the masses.

“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news,” he said.

In Tummler, Liebling wrote about a scam artist, Hymie Katz. Just naming the piece “Tummler,” he portrays Katz from the point of view of the people who revered him. A tumbler is someone who is proactive in their profession, engaging others in an inspiring way. By all means, Katz employed people but they paid him to work for his clubs.

Liebling allowed Katz’s actions to speak for itself instead of telling readers that he should be condemned as a scammer. He detailed the process in which Katz funded his projects and made away with the profits.

“The investment of his own money, according to Hymie’s code, would be unethical.”

Liebling’s writing style is what I imagine his own speaking voice to sound like. He said things like, “many buildings between Longacre Square and Sixth Avenue had a joint on every floor.” He also made up names for people such as “Johnny Attorney,” a habit that got him fired at The New York Times.

His point of view does come into his writing when he said that “Hymie always enjoyed bouncing people in a nice way” and then wrote about how he would punch a heckler with a roll of quarters and toss them where police could find them.

In Liebling’s New York, it is not so easy to rent property and manage a club. There are not many “joints” that cover building floors unless codes and regulations are followed. With the present economy, it is not easy to get people to pay you for work unless you enter the human trafficking business.

Liebling’s writing is amusing and that voice has not changed in New York today. What has changed is that media has become a lot about business instead of informing the people.