Word: scapegoat
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Overnight, Herbert Hoover was turned into a scapegoat for the economic sins of a whole generation. Charles Michelson, the Democrats' razor-tongued publicity genius, pilloried him before millions as a hapless homunculus responsible for all the nation's ills. Disgruntled citizens called the dear departed boom the Hoover boom. The depression, Democrats jeered, was the Hoover depression. The huddled shanties near the railroad tracks, where ragged men cooked garbage over old oil drums, were called Hoovervilles...
...expected after six years of Socialism, have moved uncertainly to denationalize road transport, and not at all to denationalize steel. Muddle is still a favorite British headline word, as crisis is in the French press. Yet "improvement," warned the Economist, "will not be secured by making [Mr. Churchill] the scapegoat for everything . . . When he looks at those around him-and opposite him [on the Labor benches]-he needs no immodesty to conclude that at 77 he still has more to contribute to British government than almost any other...
...head of his security police, Nespoli, began the manhunt full of confidence. At the end of three days he was stumped, and in mortal fear that his failure to find the murderer would mean, literally, his own head. Reluctantly he tried to pin the crime on an innocent scapegoat, a halfwitted girl. When that failed, it was anybody's head. Cassano became a city of pointing fingers...
...schools in recent years have been made by "paid hirelings of organizations whose motives are suspected." He continued, remarking that the normal person shows interest in his schools not by criticizing, but by conferring with the superintendent, school committee, and teachers. As a means of doing away with the "scapegoat" role of modern schools, he suggested that if citizens are given more of a sense of participation in school work they will not respond with attacks, but constructive work...
Soon afterward, naval historians began to doubt Cox's guilt, wondered if he had been made a scapegoat for a sorry U.S. defeat. Arguments in the third lieutenant's favor: the Chesapeake was fresh from refitting, manned by a green crew. Just before she sailed out to meet the Shannon, many of her men were drunk. The court-martial testimony showed that Cox, who was 23, fought his guns bravely until the crews deserted; then, cutlass in hand, he rushed up on deck to repel the boarders. Cox probably did not realize he was in command when...