A fall guy is a person used as a scapegoat to take the blame for someone else's actions, or someone at the butt of jokes. One placed in the position of fall guy is often referred to as "taking the fall". In the film industry, a fall guy is a form of stock character.
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The origin of "fall guy" is currently unknown. Many sources (see below) place the origin at the early 20th century, and some claim it is of even earlier origin. As such, the origin of the term is a source of open contention. In April 2007, William Safire promoted a search to properly unearth its origins.[1] His follow-up article is here: [2].
Four slightly different usages for "fall guy" arise. The origins of all four are probably different. The usages are:
The phrase may have originated separately more than once, or the term may have cross-pollinated to different industries and thereby gained additional meanings. In any case, if the origin of "fall guy" was as the criminal scapegoat, then whenever its written origins were, they are apt to be much later than its first verbalized use, since putting criminal conspiracies into print leads to shorter careers for crooks. Another subtle point is that the criminal usage gets back to the original sense of 'felon' (derived from fallen, morally).
Other alternatives and citations:
Various sources attribute the origin of fall guy to 'Guy Fawkes' and the Gunpowder Plot. This has been largely discredited .
One popular myth is that the word's origin dates back to the 1920s, during the administration of U.S. President Warren G. Harding (1921–1923). The term is allegedly named for Albert B. Fall, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico who served as Secretary of the Interior during Harding's years in office and became notorious for his involvement in the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal. Though a popular story, this was not the case - although this event may have popularized a phrase (via post-hoc eponymy) that may have otherwise died an inglorious death. Still, the Albert Fall story might be the crucial connection that elevated the term to apply, not merely to everyday crime, but to political debacles.
References to 'fall guy' and Albert Fall seem conspicuously nonexistent. The book, The Tempest Over Teapot Dome, [21] contains no references to 'fall guy' (as checked by Amazon text search). A Time article from the period makes no reference to 'fall guys,' although the scandal may have had yet to fully play out. [22]
Given that 'fall guy' originated from lower elements of society, one can ask how the phrase came into the political arena. (Mark Twain quips on Congress aside). Teapot Dome seems not to provide the link. To successfully enter politics, two things must occur: the phrase must be legitimized (cleansed) and the phrase must be tied to a political event.
The legitimization of the phrase seems to have occurred in the 1940s, primarily with the meaning of "take on work/responsibility". A paper on "Isolationism is not dead" (Jstor.org) 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". This seems to complete both requirements at once, yet the meaning is clearly not that of the scapegoat. By 1950, fall guy, in the context of unions and industrial society, meant the low man on the totem poll, to whom the unimportant tasks would be assigned, specifically that of filling out questionnaires (Research in Labor Unions; see Jstor.org as well) .
By the 1950s and 1960s, 'fall guy' came to mean public "whipping boy", albeit in the abstract, metaphorical sense. Advertising firms were the 'fall guy' yet no specific adman was to blame. In a 1960 paper on the 'Politics of Pollution,' public officials, to deflect criticism over landfills, found a 'fall guy' but they picked no low-ranking worker to be sacrificed, they blamed instead abstract, faceless bodies: "the federal government, state governments and private disposal companies". [23] The fall man still lacked a name and face. Other abstract 'fall guys' included the railroad and bank capital.
The rise of the political 'fall guy' seems to come from one of three events:
1. JFK assassination: Oswald claimed himself a patsy, but he was not officially labelled a 'fall guy' until 1964, by Joachim Joesten, in his book 'Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?' Oswald “was ‘a fall guy’ to use the parlance of the kind of men who must have planned the details of the assassination”.[24] [25] Oswald himself was never a political figure (although few fall guys really are political figures until their fall).
2. Watergate: Former Attorney General John Mitchell claimed he was being set up as a 'fall guy' [26]. Besides Mitchell, other fall guys were in the works. In "Public Doublespeak: On Mistakes and Misjudgments", Terence Moran cites the fall guy, but also specifically highlights the parallels between a transcript of both Nixon and Dean and a scene from The Maltese Falcon, specifically the one where Wilmer the gunman is sold out; pulp fiction meets pulp politics. [27] Also cited were the classical signs of the complicitous fall guy: defense funds, care of family and the duplicitous language of conspiracy itself. (It is only of minor curiosity that Safire, the instigator of this inquiry, is himself quoted in the above article).
Other retrospective articles on the era which use the phrase include: [28] .
Still, widespread use of the phrase does not seem to follow specifically from this event. We saw an increased rise later in the 1980s (see numbers below).
3. Iran Contra: While clearly not the first case, it was the first case in which the term clearly exploded into public consciousness, if not quite into everyday parlance. (Pre-contra, Safire seems to have kept the phrase alive in the mid-1980s ([29] and [30]).
Two reasons why use of the phrase 'fall guy' may have exploded after Iran-Contra in 1987:
Articles from the times (and incidentally also the NY Times): [32] [33].
Articles from the Washington Post: [34]
The political crossover might be complete, as well as the functional vibrancy of the word itself, after the Libby trial (2007), given that a mere citizen-juror used the phrase as he left the courthouse .
In academic circles, the 'fall guy' was also the 'straw man', the one picked to lose an argument (British Journal of Sociology, a reviewer of the book 'Legitimation of Power').
In corporate managerial classes, by 1988 the 'fall guy' was fully institutionalized as a principle, a component of what every good manager needs (R. Jackall, The World of Corporate Management, 1988).
Recently (1990s), 'fall guy' became a phrase popular among the commentariat . But it seems that, while originally the fall guy had to deal with the authorities (the police), currently the fall guy must deal with public shame and disgrace (a notable exception here is Scooter Libby).
A few examples [35] of fall guys:
For the political appointees, it seems that resignation and public shaming is enough punishment. Most political appointees can readily find jobs as lobbyists or elsewhere in the public sector, so no financial consequence really follows. Yet, perhaps the political fall guy must suffer some 'political death' (this topic is left for others to expand or contest). For the military officers, a punishment of demotion or reassignment is real enough.
With criminal groups, the fall guy would often be the lowest 'ranking' member, who would take the fall (face arrest and criminal charges) so that the rest could go free. Whether or not the lowest member could rely on the rest for support once out of prison is debatable; in the political arena, the fall guy seems to function much the same:
In politics, scandals can sometimes be resolved with simple statements of responsibility and atonement. When they cannot, "heads must roll" - in other words, parties must pay a price; often this comes with the resignation of a fall guy. If an advertising jingle were to sum it up, perhaps it would be "say it with resignations".
The fall guy also functions on the level of political consciousness. When a scandal erupts, it is not only the accused that suffer, but the whole of government. The scandal saturates media attention and grinds the machinery of government to a halt. So when the fall guy suffers his fate, its purpose is not only to protect his political bosses, but also to help the country 'move forward' with its business. Whether the advent of the 24 hour news cycle has increased the use of fall guys or not is an open question.
With political consciousness, the fall guy and his demise also maintain the framework that consequences exist and that justice shall be meted out. But if a single fall guy can absorb the punishment of many other guilty parties, the justice is mostly symbolic. So perhaps a little justice is better than no justice at all.
This book, Scapegoats: Transferring Blame, by Tom Douglas, attempts to deal with the actual process of scapegoating and public life, the ritualisation of scapegoating, and related topics in an academic sense.[36]
Another book deals primarily with Iran-contra, but also with the public exorcising of the fall guy.[37]
A curious example of the fall guy is Oliver North, who perhaps more appropriately 'fell on his sword', and takes pride in that loyal act (Washington Post article above). In his case, the act may have functioned more as a ritual (symbolic) suicide than merely taking the rap. The actual phrases 'fall guy' and 'fall on [your] sword' are used in this article, quite close to each other, and yet seem not to interact at all, [38].
For something on Teapot Dome: