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."