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139:", someone to be ritually pilloried in the absence of (or avoiding punishing) a more specifically responsible party. In a 1960 paper called the "Politics of Pollution", Robert Bullard wrote public officials seeking to deflect criticism over landfills found a "fall guy" in the form of the faceless figures in "the federal government, state governments and private disposal companies".
80:, the victim of a fraudulent investment scheme. A related term was "patsy", which typically (but not exclusively) referred to someone set up before the fact to take a fall, as opposed to simply being left "holding the bag" when something went wrong in carrying out a crime.
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A 1940s use of "fall guy" implying one inheriting work or responsibility - by default - appeared in the 1940s. A paper on "Isolationism is not dead" quotes an anonymous editorial from a paper in the
Pacific Northwest on the topic of the
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A related use of "fall guy" was for one to be left "holding the bag", meaning to be abandoned to be caught and implicated in a crime, particularly holding stolen goods, either by design or circumstance. This in turn led to the term
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By the 1950s the use of the term had morphed in the context of unions and industrial society to refer to the low man on the totem pole as one to whom the unpleasant tasks in a job or situation would be assigned.
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The term "fall guy" for one whom blame was directed upon in order to shield others had appeared in mass public culture in the U.S. at least by the 1920s. In 1925 it was the title of a
Broadway play,
452:"MITCHELL REJECTS ROLE OF 'FALL GUY' - Has 'Clear Conscience' Says He Did Nothing Wrong 'Mentally 'or Morally' in the Watergate Scandal Mitchell Rejects 'Fall Guy' Role And Denies Guilt on Watergate"
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American journalist Victor Perlo reinforced the theme that Oswald "was 'a fall guy,' to use the parlance of the kind of men who must have planned the details of the assassination".
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The origin of the term "fall guy" is unknown and contentious. Many sources place it in the early 20th century, while some claim an earlier origin. In April 2007,
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See official transcript, but also "The discourse of
American civil society: A new proposal for cultural studies". Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith.
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One suggestion that has been made in popular culture but discounted by Safire is that the word's origin dates to the administration of
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claimed he was being set up as a "fall guy" in the traditional sense of one "hung out to dry" or left "holding the bag" in the
68:, with the "fall guy" again used by a gangster as an unwitting narcotics courier. It saw widespread use in the crime-dominated
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chose to play a "fall guy" by remaining steadfast and loyal during the hearings to those he had worked for to protect them.
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Bullard, Robert D.; Beverly
Hendrix Wright (1986). "The Politics of Pollution: Implications for the Black Community".
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The killing was a murder under Texas law, but it was not a
Federal crime to assassinate a President at that time.
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This article is about the usage and origins of the colloquial phrase. For other uses of the term, see
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and the Food
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Moran, Terence P. (1 January 1975). "Public
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during
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is deliberately and falsely attributed in order to deflect blame from another party.
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Terence Moran uses the term in reference to a transcript of both
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By the 1950s and 1960s, "fall guy" could be used in lieu of "
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Some specific examples of the use of "fall guy" include:
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5 Things you may not know about JFK’s assassination
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215:during a 1987 session of Congress, maintaining
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60:and Dorothy Patterson. This was turned into a
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428:. Karws.gso.uri.edu. Archived from
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513:: Vol 22, No 2, p 189.
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365:Magazine, 29 Apr 2007
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511:Theory & Society
209:Iran–Contra scandal
113:Teapot Dome Scandal
363:The New York Times
321:The New York Times
240:Setting up to fail
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66:The Fall Guy
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58:Ernest Truex
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544:Categories
461:2013-03-01
436:2013-03-01
359:"Fall Guy"
344:2006-12-03
317:"Fall Guy"
289:2013-03-01
271:References
105:New Mexico
62:crime film
245:Straw man
230:Bagholder
194:John Dean
169:New Times
78:bagholder
70:film noir
533:fall guy
338:Archived
224:See also
143:Examples
33:to whom
27:Fall guy
21:Fall Guy
497:375189
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397:274696
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377:Phylon
41:Origin
31:person
493:JSTOR
411:CNN,
393:JSTOR
251:Notes
184:. In
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