As our inaugural Scalawag, we'd like to recognize Sid E. Williams, a true American original -- we can only hope.

Like some top corporate executives in the news lately, Dr. Sid has been unwilling to accept blame for last month's announcement that Life University, the Marietta chiropractic college he founded in 1974, had lost its accreditation.

Until he was ousted last week from the helm of the school, Dr. Sid, 74, had enjoyed a long and very lucrative run as CEO of his own cult of personality. Although Life is inexplicably blessed with nonprofit tax status and had fewer than 5,000 students at last count, Williams pulled down a higher salary than the presidents of Emory and Georgia Tech. Add in his yearly bonus and generous benefit package, plus the fact that the school and its spin-off businesses also employed his wife, daughter, and other cronies in high-paying jobs, and you're looking at quite a rich gravy train.

Williams spent lavishly on a school that was a monument to his towering ego: his face appears on the statue of a Cherokee eagle dancer; his own hands, cast in massive bronze, anchor the campus entrance; part of the administration building was a shrine of press clippings and photographs. Students' tuition money went to create a top basketball program, subsidize the "Lights of Life" holiday exhibit and reconstruct a 19th-century village on the Life campus.

Meanwhile, Life graduates had the one of the country's highest student loan default rates, which shifted the financial burden to taxpayers.

But when the rug was finally yanked out from under him, it was largely because Dr. Sid's ideas on inoculation, drugs and modern medicine -- he opposes them -- are just plain nutty. We couldn't agree more.

The Weekly Scalawag -- which seeks to recognize cases of public venality, incompetence or general boneheadedness -- is now accepting nominations. E-mail the keeper of the Scalawag at scott.henry@creativeloafing.com