Why did Ring Lardner choose the town barber as the narrator, and is he reliable?

The most obvious reason for choosing a town barber as a
narrator is a stylistic one: a barber can tell a long tale without interruption to an
uninvolved listener. Another reason is that in small towns in the 1920s, the town barber
shop was very often the gathering place for the local men. This puts the barber in a
position of advantage because he knows everyone very well and knows all the town gossip
and all the latest news and the hottest stories of exploits. In other words, the town
barber is the best source of information on the male population of the
town.

The question as to whether Whitey the barber is relaible or not
is a complicated one. In a very real way, he is not reliable as he identifies Jim
Kendall and Hod Meyers as pranksters who are full of "mischief" and fun and who have the
whole laughing more than any other small town:

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[Jim] and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an
uproar. I bet they was more laughin' done here than any town its size in
America.

Even after Jim
assaults Julie then humiliates her, when Doc Stair enters the barbershop to look for
Paul Dickson, the barber still insists that Jim is basically a good
man:

I said it
had been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn't resist no kind of a joke, no
matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubblin' over with
mischief.

On the other hand,
he does have an accurate perception of the other characters and he does express sympathy
for the ones who take the greatest brunt of Jim's brutal "all kinds of sport": Milton,
with the Adam's apple; Paul Dickson, with the fall on his head in babyhood; Julie Gregg,
who rejects Jim continually.

In conclusion, Whitey's
reliability is mixed: he has no right sense for the immorality of brutality, yet he has
an accurate perception of decent people. This, of course, plays into Lardner's theme,
which protests against condoning vicious behavior, such as Jim's and Hod's, as good old
mischief and laughs: brutality is brutality no matter if cowardly people and "the rough
bunch" laugh at it.