Jon Stewart kicked off Pride month on The Daily Show by ruthlessly mocking corporate America for its hollow gestures of support. He poked fun at Burger King’s “Pride Whopper” made with two equal buns, Skittles’ colorless ad and Target’s reversal of its pro-LGBTQ stance in 2024.
It’s clear that these companies only care about the LGBTQ community when it’s good for their bottom line.
Jon Stewart’s fed up with ’hollow corporate pandering’
During The Daily Show’s second episode of Pride Month, Jon Stewart skewered corporate virtue signaling for a profit, calling out companies that co-opt the LGBTQ community for their own profit. Stewart started with a joke about Burger King’s promotion of “two equal buns” for Pride and then mocked Oreo’s commercial featuring a lesbian couple that wins over a conservative dad, as well as Target’s Pride merchandise line.
The Comedy Central host claimed that big-name corporations want to appear LGBTQ-friendly as long as it makes them money, but they back off when they face a political backlash from the right. He showed a news clip announcing that Target dialed down its Pride displays in 2023, and he also highlighted Bud Light’s quick retreat from a transgender influencer after she faced a torrent of homophobic comments on TikTok last year.
The segment added to a growing feeling among progressives that big-name companies only support social justice causes when they’re not likely to be punished by the right. The Daily Show host compared their behavior to the protagonist of American Psycho, a movie about a white male serial killer who becomes obsessed with his own sexual desires and then kills people to maintain his sexual dominance.
Jon Stewart’s fed up with ’hollow diversity’
The Daily Show host skewered corporate America for its performative marketing campaigns around Pride month, and then its quick retreat from those efforts under right-wing pressure. He pointed out that companies like Target, Vaseline and Bud Light had all jumped on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) bandwagon in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and subsequent Black Lives Matter movement, but that commitment “only lasted until the protests died down,” with Google, Meta and other tech giants quietly cutting their DEI-related jobs in the following years.
Jon Stewart also mocked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s shrugging of Stewart’s impassioned call for Congress to reauthorize the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, noting that it was an “incredibly shameful display of political hypocrisy” and that the senator’s criticism of Code Pink and 9/11 Truthers has no currency among liberals.
Jon Stewart carries the burden of being something like a Trusted Name in Liberal America, and he has an audience that is fracturing along political and generational lines. That fracturing, in conjunction with the decay of traditional newsrooms and the rise of social media, may spell trouble for his new show, which could be the first to debut on Apple TV+ without any direct distribution deal with a major television or movie studio. That could leave it vulnerable to the same kinds of political and geopolitical controversy that have engulfed Disney and Starbucks.
Jon Stewart’s fed up with ’hollow inclusion’
The Daily Show host kicked off Pride Month by skewering cringe-worthy corporate attempts to make themselves appear LGBTQ-friendly. He pointed out that big-name companies only support societal issues when they are incentivized by doing so. He cited the plethora of Pride campaigns that have gone wrong over the years, from Burger King’s “two equal buns” promotion to Skittles’ sex position-themed ad. He then ran through a news clip that showed Target dialing back its Pride merchandise after conservative outrage.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Stewart said, “corporations saw people demand a reckoning with America’s racist past and they said: ‘Sure, we can do that!’”. Jon Stewart then rolled out a montage of diversity ads from Kraft Heinz, Vaseline, and Doritos, but noted that the companies’ apparent dedication to improving their diversity and inclusion standards only lasted until they faced backlash. He also noted that tech giants like Meta and Google have quietly axed their DEI departments in recent years.
Ultimately, Stewart compared these corporations to the protagonist of American Psycho, who clings to the belief that he’s inherently good until he’s confronted with his inner evil. He called for companies to stop the charade and admit that they only care about profit.
Jon Stewart’s fed up with ’hollow equality’
It’s Pride Month, which means it’s time for companies to showcase their “woke” support for the LGBTQ community. But Jon Stewart called out this yearly display of hollow corporate pandering on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show, mocking the idea that corporations care about societal issues—and pointing out that they only care about making money.
Stewart pointed out that in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, corporations saw a demand for a reckoning with America’s racist past and said: “sure, us too.” He then rolled a montage of diversity campaigns from Target, Doritos, and Vaseline—which, he claimed, “only lasted until people stopped asking for it.” He also noted that companies like Meta and Google have quietly shuttered their DEI departments as recently as 2023.
The satirist continued to criticize Pride promotions in a subsequent segment, claiming that big-name companies want to appear LGBTQ-friendly only as long as they make money and will back down if they face a backlash from conservatives or otherwise lose public attention. He slammed Target for dialing back its Pride merchandise collection after conservative outrage last year, and showed how Bud Light quickly capitulated to transphobic retaliation against drag queen influencer Dylan Mulvaney when she promoted their products on TikTok this year. “This ebb and flow of celebrating equality before placating right-wing values is getting old,” Stewart concluded. “Corporations should just admit that they don’t really care about anything except their bottom line.”
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