Fall guy

Fall Guy or The Fall Guy may refer to: * Fall guy, a person to whom blame is attributed to deflect responsibility from another party

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. === Errant Teapot Dome conflation=== One suggestion that has been made in popular culture but discounted by Safire is that the word's origin dates to 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. ==Examples== a "fall guy" for the assassination of John F. Kennedy]] Some specific examples of the use of "fall guy" include: Assassin of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, was characterized as a "fall guy" in the traditional criminal sense (regardless of the fact that the assassination was a political event overlaying the criminal act of murder ) by writer Joachim Joesten in the title of his 1964 book Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?. In reviewing the Joesten book for the New Times 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". Former United States Attorney General John Mitchell 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 Watergate scandal. In Public Doublespeak: On Mistakes and Misjudgments Terence Moran uses the term in reference to a transcript of both Richard Nixon and John Dean. He also cites a scene from The Maltese Falcon in which Wilmer, the young gunman, is sold out and left to "take the fall". The phrase was used regarding the Iran–Contra scandal by Representative Louis Stokes during a 1987 session of Congress, maintaining Oliver North chose to play a "fall guy" by remaining steadfast and loyal during the hearings to those he had worked for to protect them. ==Notes==

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