Fall guy
Fall guy is a colloquial phrase that refers to a person to whom blame is deliberately and falsely attributed in order to deflect blame from another party. Origin. The origin of the term "fall guy" is unknown and contentious. Many sources place its origin in the early 20th century, while some claim an earlier origin. In April 2007, William Safire promoted a search to unearth its origins. Discredited origins. Teapot connection. One suggestion that has been made in popular culture is that the word's origin dates to the 1920s, during the administration of U.S. President Warren G.  Harding (1921–1923), when Albert B. Fall, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico who served as Secretary of the Interior during Harding's years in office, became notorious for his involvement in the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal. Political crossover. Legitimization occurred in the 1940s, primarily with the meaning of "take on work/responsibility". A paper on "Isolationism is not dead" quotes an anonymous editorial from a paper in the Pacific Northwest on the topic of the Bretton Woods and the Food Conferences upon which the US became the "fall guy, the one to carry the load". By 1950 in the context  of unions and industrial society, the term referred to the low man on the totem pole, to whom the unpleasant tasks would be assigned, specifically that of filling out questionnaires. By the 1950s and 1960s, "fall guy" came to mean public "whipping boy" in the abstract, metaphorical sense. In a 1960 paper called the "Politics of Pollution", Robert Bulard writes public officials, to deflect criticism over landfills, found a "fall guy", but they blamed abstract, faceless bodies: "the federal government, state governments and private disposal companies" rather than an individual. Other abstract 'fall guys' included the railroad and bank capital . Use of the political "fall guy" is exemplified in the following three events: Other uses. In corporate managerial classes, by 1988 the "fall guy" was institutionalized as a principle, a component of what every good manager needed. A few examples of fall guys: