Jon Stewart celebrated Pride month the only way he knows how: by ruthlessly mocking corporations for their “hollow” commitments to the LGBTQ+ community, “woke” politics and patriotism.
“Pride month is, of course, that time of the year when corporations get together and financially exploit the decades long struggle of gay people for acceptance and equality,” Stewart said on “The Daily Show.”
First up was Burger King and its burger that has “two bottom buns.” “That’s not a funny make-’em-up,” Stewart said, showing a picture of the fast food chain’s Pride Whopper with two “equal buns.”
Next up was the colorless version of Skittles, which Stewart said the company did to make sure they didn’t confuse gay people with “competing rainbows.” The late night host then played an ad showing a father overcoming his deep conservative values by painting a fence with rainbow colors and asked his audience to guess what the commercial was advertising. Naturally, the answer was Oreos.
“What the f–k?” Stewart asked.
“That’s the burden corporations must bear. They care almost too much about the human condition, often finding themselves in the crosshairs of ideologues and fundamentalists. But they stand by their values, sometimes for a couple of months,” Stewart joked.
The late night host also had some scathing words for Target and Bud Light. After mocking Target for setting up a “small area in their 20,000 square feet of store” to sell “a Pride T-shirt they had made in Indonesia for $0.29,” Stewart went after the chain for scaling back its Pride collection. Following the conservative backlash the company faced in 2023, Target announced that it would only sell its Pride month merchandise in certain stores.
He then mocked the Bud Light “murder purge” that came about after trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney did a collaboration with the company last year. He then mocked Vaseline and Doritos’ responses to the George Floyd murder as well as SpaghettiOs’ odd tweet about remembering Peal Harbor.
The late night host then got to his ultimate point when it comes to “hollow corporate pandering.” “Stop. We don’t need any of this,” Stewart said.
“Why are allowing ourselves to get worked up over whether giant multinational corporations are pro gay or have patriotic values?” Stewart asked. “Let’s just let corporations live their truth as the profit-seeking Patrick Bateman psychopaths they are. At the very least we might finally get some honesty from then as well.”
