It seems that McDonald’s Wants to Rebrand as a ‘Progressive Burger Company.’ From the inestimable George Will:

In January, McDonald’s, leaning against the winds of fashion, said kale would never replace lettuce on its burgers. In May, however, it said it will test kale in a breakfast meal (breakfast is about 25 percent of McDonald’s sales). Kale might or might not cause construction workers to turn at 6 a.m. into McDonald’s drive-through lines, where approximately two-thirds of McDonald’s customers place their orders.

McDonald’s also says its milk will soon be without artificial growth hormones, and chicken (McDonald’s sells more of it than of beef) will be free of human antibiotics. All these might be good business decisions and as socially responsible as can be. They certainly pertain to McDonald’s new mantra about being a “modern, progressive burger company,” whatever that means.

The meaning will perhaps be explained by the progressive burger company’s new spokesman, Robert Gibbs, formerly Barack Obama’s spokesman and MSNBC contributor. McDonald’s British-born CEO Steve Easterbrook clarifies things, sort of, while speaking a strange business dialect: McDonald’s will be “more progressive around our social purpose in order to deepen our relationships with communities on the issues that matter to them.”

And silly me, I thought the purpose of running a business was to provide a good or a service, create value and make a profit. But it is 2015 and the age of Obama, so I guess businesses now have to have a “social purpose,” which amazingly enough corresponds to the progressive obsession with what we consume. Fortunately, those of us who do not identify as progressives have plenty of burger and fast food options, and our family plans to take advantage of those when the opportunity and urge arises.

Will concludes his piece with an interesting dilemma facing a progressive fast food company:

Progressives are forever telling us who is and who is not on “the right side of history.” Many fastidious progressives deplore, and try to control (witness San Francisco’s current crusade against soft drinks), other people’s food choices. It will be instructive watching the progressive burger company try to persuade its chosen constituents to stop at McDonald’s on the way home from Whole Foods, their environmentally responsible, because reusable, shopping bags overflowing with kale.