For Pride month this year, Jon Stewart had one request for corporations and their LGBTQ+ focused marketing campaigns: “Stop.”
The Daily Show host started off his monologue on Monday by showing viewers some recent Pride-related ad campaigns from major companies, such as a three-minute long Oreo commercial about a father accepting his daughter’s new girlfriend, or the colorless design of a Skittles bag labeled “only one rainbow matters during Pride.”
“And then, of course, there’s Target,” Stewart said. “Pride month means so much to them that they set up one small area in their 20,000 square feet of store, to sell you a Pride T-shirt they had made in Indonesia for 29 cents…. Because they believe so much in the cause.”
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He followed this remark with a news clip announcing that Target was “dialing back” its Pride month celebrations in response to right-wing outrage in 2023, and later showed how Bud Light quickly capitulated to transphobic attacks against transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney after her promotional video for the company on TikTok last year.
“But don’t be sad,” Stewart joked, “for this is only following in a long line of hollow corporate pandering meant to convince you that not only are corporations people—they’re good people. Decent people who care about the systemic ills of this great nation.”
He demonstrated how corporations that loudly celebrated their commitment to diversity in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests have also backtracked in the years since. “Their commitment only lasted until the protests died down,” Stewart said, and later added, “They’re very clearly conflicted between the high moral values they think we want and the amoral values that serve their shareholders.”
Stewart’s proposed solution was for corporations to simply drop the charade once and for all: “Let’s stop pretending that a corporation can even be woke or un-woke or patriotic or un-patriotic. 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 them as well.”
