The E Street Band member and Springsteen’s friend, Tony Soprano’s pal Silvio, an activist fighting for the Arts, and the subject of a new HBO Max Documentary “Disciple”, raises some basic questions.
(Little Stevie Van Zandt, Age 74)
With minivan-sized, unidentified flying drones darkening the skies over parts of New Jersey and New York this season, it took Rock Star, actor and activist, Stevie Van Zandt to raise the most fundamental question:
“I only have one question,” Van Zandt asked MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle and her other “Nightcap” panelists on her show “The 11th Hour, on Friday, December 13.
“Why are drones legal?” Van Zandt said. “ Are they not a terrorist act waiting to happen?”
Van Zandt, who turned 74 last month, and identifies himself as “an independent law & order liberal,” was pretty blunt.
“I don’t care how big it is,” Van Zandt added. “It could be a bomb. All drones should be illegal.”
Steven Van Zandt, born into a working class family with a Goldwater-supporting, military man of a father, is no fear-monger, nor technological troglodyte. He’s still making music, after 50 years of performing with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band; still acting, after his Emmy winning role as Silvio in the HBO “Sopranos” series; still advocating for inserting the “Arts” into STEM education, to bring back a commitment to innovation and creativity in schools across the nation, and still a global activist fighting for human and civil rights.
HBO Max is airing a new documentary this month about Van Zandt’s life as a social justice and educational activist. The documentary is called: “Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple.”
Suddenly, Stevie is all over the place again, and, in the aftermath of Trump’s re-election, speaking his trademark “Little Stevie” common sense as much as ever. He is a tough critic of both the Democratic Party and of Donald Trump. Here are a few things he said about the 2024 Presidential election on “The 11th Hour:”
SVZ: “The Democratic Party did all they could to help Trump. The “Trans” policies in that commercial that ran every 30-seconds started under Trump, but the Democratic Party didn’t address the truth.
SVZ: “Trump was what the American people voted for. This guy (Trump) could not be more openly corrupt. How does a former DA lose to a convicted felon?’
Van Zandt added that “We’re not really in a democracy, but we’re in the ballpark,” and went on to call Trump’s Cabinet nominees “an insane group.”
Everything he said on Stephenie Ruhle’s MSBC show was a headline, but what grabbed me most was his unvarnished view of drones: “Why are drones legal?”
Little Stevie’s statements got me scurrying through by archives, back 10 years to when I wrote a article on my website (socialvisionproductions.com) predicting the very drone dangers that are happening right now. I wrote it when drones were our newest technological toy, at the same time Apple introduced it’s first Apple Watch.
My 2014 article, went like this:
“Drones, those darting, dive-bombing Deus Ex Machinas, are finally facing a few flimsy regulations, after one landed on the White House lawn in the middle of the night, because its operator was drunk. Fortunately, that DWI delinquent drone was not carrying a nuclear payload or deadly chemicals.”
As a way of holding Drone owners directly accountable for their potentially dangerous devices, I didn’t go as far as Van Zandt in calling for their outright banning, but in marrying Apple’s I-Phone and I-Watch technologies: creating a sort of “Drone-Phone,” which would be required to come back to the wrist or pocket of its operator after every use.
I wrote:
“In the spirit of Apple’s new Watch, I’ve got a creative solution to these techie mind-twisters, putting responsible limits on drones by holding “droners” directly accountable for their operation. My solution is called, the “CellDrone,” and I’m offering my idea to Apple or China’s DJI Technology Company, the world’s biggest maker of drones.”
“My CellDrone would work something like this:
Designed to fit in your pocket like an Iphone, the CellDrone, is twice the thickness of your average mobile phone. Once turned on, the CellDrone can be used as a normal Iphone to make phone calls, send texts, scan social media, find pizza places, play music, search contacts, or take photos.
“However, here’s where the CellDrone soars!
A new button on top of the phone, when pressed three times, transforms it into a small, Optimus Prime-like Drone before your very eyes. In order to operate the CellDrone, you’ve got to turn on your matching CD (for CellDrone) WristWatch—way cooler than the Apple Watch– and press the “activation” button three times as well. Multiple, coordinated button-pressing is required to avoid accidental activation, like “butt droning” especially if the CellDrone user is in a tightly enclosed space, like a subway car, bus, bathroom stall, or a micro-apartment.
Once the CD Watch is coordinated with the CellDrone, the user can give voice commands to the CellDrone through a microphone in the CD Watch. The new voice recognition system in the CellDrone/CD Watch is highly sophisticated and precise, able to distinguish a Brooklyn accent from a Southern Drawl, or Mandarin Chinese from Farsi, as well as the slurred speech of inebriated or stoned users.
When the CellDrone user wants to take a “selfie” photo from a distance greater than arms-length, he or she simply activates the CellDrone, sets the distance on his CD watch (cannot exceed 10 feet) and speaks into the CD Watch the word “Photobomb.”
The CellDrone then snaps multiple photos of the user and others with the user. Unlike the Spazzatura (garbage, in Italian) “Selfie Stick” which can poke people in the eyes, puncture art canvases or knock over statues, the CellDrone is programmed with a remarkably sensitive sonar field which can “feel” the presence of any object within a few inches. Upon sensing a strange object within its field of “photobombing,” the CellDrone will, bat-like, automatically land and attach itself back to the CD Watch, which acts as its control tower.
If the CellDrone user tries to move more than 10 feet from the device, the CellDrone will not fly, regardless of the volume or number of voice commands. If the CellDrone user tries to abuse the CellDrone for other than “photobombing” purposes—like dropping real bombs, or poisonous chemicals— the CD Watch is pre-programmed to immediately contact 9-1-1, and give the operators location and name.
While the CellDrone is intended for close, personal photographic use only, and not for the delivery of packages, bombs or anthrax, nor intended to cross the flight paths of commercial jetliners potentially causing deadly air collisions, the CD Watch will be required for ALL Drone users, commercial or personal, and for ALL Drone purchasers and users to be registered in a national data bank—something which we still don’t require of purchasers, users and owners of Assault Weapons.
What the CD Watch technology would mean for every “droner”, is that ALL drones, regardless of size or payload, once activated, will automatically return to the wrist of the user. (NB: That requirement would rule out mini-van sized drones, unless the user wants to be crushed by his own drone when it returns to it’s launch pad.) The used drone can only be removed from the CD Watch at a fully licensed Drone Removal Clinic (or, DR. Clinic), where a full history of the usage and user of the Drone will be taken, along with the user’s picture. Once you purchase a drone, the CD Watches becomes a mandatory accessory—kind of like an ankle bracelet for people under house arrest —and can never be removed from users’ wrist until the drone is deactivated and destroyed.”
I re-read my dissertation-like droning on about drones written back in 2014, and decided that I liked Stevie Van Zandt’s far simpler and cleaner proposal, requiring no cumbersome regulations, nor bureaucracy to implement it:
“ALL DRONES SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.”
Thanks, Stevie. I am now a Van Zandt “Disciple” on drones.