During his monologue on Monday, “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart called out various companies for exploiting “gay suffering” during Pride Month.
After paying tribute to “Wheel of Fortune” star Pat Sajak, Stewart slammed several companies, mocking commercials for Burger King, Skittles, Oreo and Target.
“Pride Month, of course, is a time when corporations come together to financially exploit gay people’s decades-long fight for acceptance and equality,” Stewart said, segueing into the episode’s main segment, which featured Burger King’s “Pride Whopper,” made with “two equal-sized buns,” Skittles’ colorless “Pride Pack,” and an Oreo ad depicting a family “overcoming the father’s deeply held conservative values.”
Stewart then switched to Target, but the company faced backlash last year for selling Pride Month merchandise and is selling fewer items this year.
“That’s the burden that companies have to bear,” Stewart says. “Because they care so much about the human condition, they often become targets for ideologues and fundamentalists. But companies stand by their values - sometimes for months!”
“This is just an extension of a long line of empty corporate pandering that would have us believe that corporations are not only human, but good people,” he later added, “good people who care about the systemic pathologies of this great country.”
The late-night show host said the same thing has happened with diversity campaigns, with companies publicly touting their efforts but then scaling back some of those programs.
“Stop it!” he said. “We don’t need this.”
“Why do we care about big multinational corporations being pro-gay or having traditional American values,” Stewart says, “because corporations only have one value: shareholder value. That’s all they have.”
