I was watching a TV show about an air crash where an air traffic controller was partly responsible for the crash. In an interview an official says:
"You don't deserve to be a boogeyman for everybody."
I did a google search to see what that usage means, but I did not find any useful results.
What is the meaning of "boogeyman for everybody" in this context. Can you please provide some examples?
Best Answer
When you tried searching on Google, did you put "boogeyman for everyone" in quotes?
It doesn't produce a lot of results (under 100), but it's rather evident that when that phrase is used, it refers to a person or thing being used as a rallying cry to incite anger or panic.
(The Google search results show the phrase being applied to a variety of hot-button political issues that might be the next boogeyman for everyone to get all up in arms about.)
In the context of the TV show, it sounds like the speaker didn't want that one controller to get all the blame – and perhaps all the media heat – for the accident.
EDIT: Here are a few examples that I found on Google. Due to the nature of the phrase, some of these are talking about contentious issues, which is why I didn't want to include them in my original answer; therefore, these come with the disclaimer that I'm not taking a stance on these issues, I'm merely quoting how other people have used the phrase.
As the last few quotes show, sometimes people or corporations aren't the boogeyman for "everyone," but only for certain groups of people.