The company has been the whipping boy of pundits, politicians, and professional whiners for three years.

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Even so, Sprint seems to have effectively used Lightsquared as a whipping boy for Clearwire in their negotiations.

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The atmosphere in Congress was tense before Thanksgiving, he said, adding that he feels "automakers have become the whipping boy" for the industry bailout.

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As with so much about Twitter, which has gone from media darling to whipping boy at warp speed, the promise still outweighs the reality.

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Grubman is Eliot Spitzer's favorite whipping boy--and the rest of wall street, which plied many of the same tricks, seems happy to let him stay that way.

FORBES: The Scapegoat

The current fashionable whipping boy is, of course, the Suhartos.

CNN: CONTEMPLATING THE DYNASTY BEYOND 2000

Before the weekend was over, Casey was in the middle of a transatlantic storm and Colin Montgomerie's position as every drunk American golf fan's favourite European whipping boy looked precarious.

BBC: Candid Casey eyes fresh start

America's biggest retailer has become everybody's favourite whipping boy.

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McCarthy became a favourite whipping boy for the left.

ECONOMIST: McCarthyism

He clearly cares deeply about the title character (Vincent Gallo), a writer living in Buenos Aires, who had been the darling, and is now the whipping boy, of a dominant local critic.

NEWYORKER: Tetro

Another whipping-boy is the European Union (EU).

ECONOMIST: Tussles in a flat landscape