CRAIG GLAZER CONSIDERS COST OF FAME!!!

TKC NOTE: A welcomed change of pace for tonight from Kansas City's favorite media impresario. Check it:

The Price of Notoriety
‘I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name
'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars’ – Nickelback ‘I Want to be a Rock Star’

Not everybody wants to be a well-known, high profile individual. Most people aren’t going to have that option whether they like it or not. Notoriety comes in many packages. When you are a younger person it’s the attention one gets in school. ‘Being popular.’ Usually this tag falls on the more attractive males and females at the school, the good athletes as well as the ‘rule breakers’; you know, the guys like Judd Nelson in ‘Breakfast Club’. The ones who misbehave in an almost acceptable manner, and so they stand out.

Unfortunately, it’s kind of rare that students with great grades, good parenting and those that act with a great deal of respect towards others ever become that popular. Moreover, one can be successful from any one of these groups…or not, there are no guarantees.

What makes Craig Glazer so popular in the media and on-line as well as vocally disliked?

I had a recent conversation with a former Kansas City Star columnist on this very issue. He had a pretty simple answer. ‘People like you,’ he said, ‘tend to have a fairly large ego. That’s normal. This, in and of itself, can piss people off. Your character both on radio and in print comes off a bit like a know-it-all. You tend to write or talk about subjects that always include you. Example: You wrote about the death of Elizabeth Taylor which was interesting, but you included your run-in with her at a Malibu restaurant. You inject your experiences with celebrities and major instances which most people don’t have.’

‘It comes off in two distinct ways,’ he continued, ‘your name-dropping and showing off. I get that you are trying to make the story more personal and thus, more interesting but most people don’t get that. Furthermore, you’ve lived a controversial life to begin with and you, overall have had success. It all adds up to make you a juicy target.’

I know many readers enjoy the gunfire of the negative comments to some of my articles. Where there’s smoke, there is always fire at least to some degree. The fact that, as an adult teenager, I was an armed ‘sting’ artist/ robber of drug dealers in the American Southwest is not a secret. Some people don’t find this former lifestyle to be appropriate or as anything that can be excused. I have compared those adventures to the lives of famous outlaws like Jesse James and Jon Dillinger. However, I am very much aware that history will decide those comparisons, not you or I. Most readers know that I have made an effort to secure that notoriety with the book, ‘The King of Sting’ and hopefully, with the ensuing film based on the book. To make matters more murky, I was given the opportunity to become a special agent for the Kansas Attorney General. When I started the job, I was only twenty which was unique. The fact that I’d operated on the other side of the law but was accepted by the government was also unique. It led to a huge political scandal and much controversy. This front page news led to shock and questioning of my motives. I must confess my motives were far from pure. I was living my life intentionally to be a movie and to become a character of note. The fact that I worked on special targets for the most part and arrested no one that I knew did not matter. Thus came the battle-cry that I was a ‘narc’, ‘snitch’ or ‘rat’ and that I ‘wasn’t a real cop’. Other people have said ‘If he was a cop, he was a crooked cop selling drugs.’ None of that is true, but it doesn’t matter, people paint a picture that suits themselves.

A bigger truth to all these events is most people react internally to these stories with ‘Why the fuck did he get to do that and I don’t?’

The crazy lifestyle continued when I optioned my life story to CBS in 1981. I lived in Hollywood, I was able to garner much attention to my story ‘Outlaws’. I ended up in shows like ‘NBC Tonight’ and the ‘Today’ show and was constantly in the LA media. Hollywood liked the hijinks of Glazer and Woodbeck. Woodbeck, of course, was my sting partner. Because of the media, us having a film agent and ‘Made for TV’ motion picture deal; he and I were able to hobnob with celebrities, movie stars and big name film people.

‘Why the fuck did he get to do that?’

Woodbeck was later shot to death in a sting gone wrong while we had a movie deal. Then we were front page news from LA to New York. A heavy price to pay.

What followed was a multi-million dollar sting that I led against agents of the Federal Government that I believed to be Columbian drug-dealers that may have been involved in Woodbeck’s murder. This led to me going to trial, being found guilty and sentenced to prison for seven years. I did four and a half years. A heavy price to pay. Of course, this led to another avalanche of publicity.

Leaving prison at the end of 1988, I was fortunate enough to catch on with the Champions Forever film group and had the chance to produce five sports movies that all went on to do very well, including the Muhammed Ali Story.

Now the wayward son returns to Kansas City, takes over Stanford and Sons in Westport and then I become a local ‘in-your-face’ media personality on almost any subject under the sun. We then have the somewhat famous lawsuit with my father which ends up a featured story on the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Smart Money’ magazine. Following this, we have the 2001 September 11th indictment on a cocaine conspiracy that never really existed. After an avalanche of publicity on this, the Federal Prosecutor admitted the Federal Government had made something of an error. When it ended the judge said, ‘I find it somewhat understandable, though wrong, that Craig used cocaine. But it was for personal use, it’s obvious he never sold drugs to anyone. The information that Law Enforcement received about him has been proven incorrect. After looking at the good he’s done for the community, I believe we are better off keeping him within the community. I would like to let him go free, but under the law I cannot. I sentence him to six months of custody in a halfway house followed by three years probation.’

Add all of that to a lifestyle of being a playboy that drives flashy cars, dates super-young super hot women, and being in my fifties to boot and the target on me suddenly grows to battleship size. By the way I haven’t even addressed that I play the heel on radio shows like ‘The Johnny Dare Morning Show’ on 98.9 The Rock. Add to that that I constantly talk about my ‘womanizing’ on other radio shows, and you begin to see why I’m not at the front of the line to light up the Christmas lights every year on the Plaza.

I thought writing my book would clear up much of the above. Maybe it only made it worse. My biggest failure is not having that one anchor of ‘smash’ success like a TV series or getting my life story made as a major motion picture. Hopefully, that will change. Likely it won’t change the opinion of many who see me as the evil empire. Understand this, it is having lived this life, Hollywood, Law Enforcement, sting artist and comedy club impresario as well as all the rest that gives me the insight and life experience to give you my point of view of life itself. It doesn’t make me right, but it would be hard to imagine finding someone else who has done all these things. I think that is what makes me unique but also makes me a figure of controversy.
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