Culture

Jon Stewart Wonders What Black Friday Tells Us About the Private Sector's Supposed Excellence

Despite a week-long gap in programming, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart notes that the top story remains the troubled life of HealthCare.gov.

By Zach Schonfeld
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This article is from the archive of our partner .

Despite a week-long gap in programming, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart notes that the top story remains the troubled life of HealthCare.gov, "the beleaguered Obamacare website that was supposed to provide an online marketplace for health care, but instead the website records you having sex and emails it to your parents."

No, but really—it's new, improved, and supposedly glitch-free now. Stewart congratulated the administration with a heartfelt card (which reads "Congratulations..." across the cover):

But the GOP still has contrary ideas about how to fix healthcare. As one gesticulative Fox News guest put it, "If we could let the private sector run rampant in medical care—my gosh, you'd be able to buy the equivalent of an iPhone like you can now for $29 dollars."

"Didn't we just see an example of the private sector at work just this past week?" Stewart wondered, flipping the footage to mayhem, fistfights, and literal carnage during Black Friday's frenzy, ranging from pepper spray being unleashed on Texas shoppers to a man dressed as Santa being arrested at a Walmart protest in California. ("How bad does your organization have to be for Santa to be protesting your labor conditions? The man runs an elf sweatshop!")

And cyber-shoppers weren't immune to glitches; Walmart's website temporarily crashed from heavy traffic, which sounds mighty familiar.

"Basically, Walmart spent months whipping consumers into violent frenzies, then subjected their workers to those frenzies during a holiday, all while their website burned to the ground," Stewart summarized. "What does the private sector call this kind of debacle?"

Err, Walmart's calling it the "most successful Black Friday in its history." Let's hope the Obama administration doesn't take hints from such private sector excellence as it tweaks its healthcare marketplace.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.