Remember when the water was bad in Mexico and the jobs were in Flint MI? Well, as a matter of fact, I do.....
Would a potential Standing Rock joke by Mike told at a BB show bother you? Just curious. I happen to think it's bad taste to make jokey stage banter out of tragedies. Call me crazy.
Let me give you some context. I live in Michigan. I work for an institution that is deeply entrenched in Flint and helping the residents to deal with the water crisis. My job brings me to Flint frequently--I know many people directly effected by this disaster.
I attended a concert in Michigan earlier this year where Mike gave his water charity spiel. This is how I described it then:
"One more thing I forgot to mention, Mike had some sort of blue scarf on stage that was apparently made in India. He talked about it for a couple of minutes (made a Steven Tyler joke), mentioned they were for sale at the merch table with 100% of proceeds going to clean water efforts. He made a joke about bringing the initiative to Flint."
The stage banter went on a little longer than necessary, but, unless the "joke" changed a lot since then, he essentially said that the proceeds from the sale of the scarves went for drinking water in Africa, though maybe it should be going to Flint. I didn't find it demeaning or disrespectful, more of a commentary on the fact that clean, safe drinking water shouldn't be in question for citizens in the United States in 2016.
Again, maybe he has changed the "joke" to be offensive. The "joke" received some groans from the audience, but more of a knowing, why is it even a question of clean drinking water, in the USA, in 2016.
There are a lot of things to criticize Mike about, but this seems a little overblown.