"No, no, you naughty Christine!" An Excursion into the Limits of Artificial Intelligence

No, no, you naughty Christine!
You’ve ruined the Tory machine.
For to lie in the nude,
Is just a bit rude
But to lie in the House is obscene.

I came up with this limerick around 1990 at a debate session of The Edmund Burke Society in an elegant room on the University of Chicago campus. The Society was founded that year by alumni of the Tory Party at Yale University who were now graduate students, law students, or MBA students at Chicago. I had gotten my PhD five years before, but George Stigler had invited me to be a visiting scholar for a year, and I liked hanging out with graduate students. The student atmosphere at Chicago was rather gloomy then, and probably still, since the tone of the place is set by humanities PhD students, and the undergraduates pick up that world-weariness. Economics students (well, those who had passed their 1st year exams), MBA students, and law students were quite jolly, though, probably in reaction to the poseurs.¹

It’s one of those poems like T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, though: it needs footnotes. T.S. Eliot was criticized for introducing such obscure references in his poem that he needed to include notes at the end— or perhaps it was just the notes at the end he was criticized for, for making it too easy to figure out his obscurities and ruining the snobbery game.² If T.S. Eliot was criticized, so, I suppose, must I.³ In 1990, explanation wasn’t so necessary either. I had learned details of the Profumo Affair from the 1989 movie, Scandal, with John Hurt as Stephen Ward, Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler, and Ian McKellen as John Profumo. Today, in 2024, you can ask Wikipedia or ChatGPT for background. I was going to look up details and then write the historical background of the Profumo Affair for you, but then I realized I could just ask ChatGPT, “What was the Profumo affair?” Here is a a slightly shortened version of what came back:

Key Points of the Profumo Affair:

1. John Profumo: John Profumo was a senior Conservative politician serving as the Secretary of State for War. He was married to actress Valerie Hobson and was considered a rising star in British politics.

2. Christine Keeler: The scandal began when it was revealed that John Profumo had been involved in an extramarital affair with Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old model and showgirl. Keeler was also romantically involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London, which raised concerns about national security.

3. National Security Concerns: The affair became particularly explosive because of Keeler's simultaneous relationship with Ivanov. The possibility of compromising information being passed to the Soviet Union during the Cold War made the affair not just a personal scandal but a potential security threat.

Denial and Admission: In March 1963, Profumo denied the affair in the House of Commons, stating there was "no impropriety whatsoever" in his relationship with Keeler. However, after further investigations, Profumo confessed on June 5, 1963, that he had lied to Parliament and had indeed had an affair with Keeler. He resigned from his position and from Parliament.

Consequences: The scandal severely damaged the credibility of the Conservative government. It led to a loss of trust in the government and was a significant factor in the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan later that year. The affair also contributed to the Conservative Party's defeat in the 1964 general election.

Social and Cultural Impact: The Profumo Affair is often seen as a turning point in British public life, marking the decline of deference to authority and the beginning of a more critical, skeptical attitude toward political leaders. It exposed the hypocrisy and double standards within the British establishment and had a lasting impact on British politics and society.

But ChatGPT can do better. I was going to tell you that ChatGPT could tell you all about the Profumo Affair, but if you look at the limerick, you’ll notice that the words “Profumo” and “parliament” don’t appear there, just “Christine” and “Tory”. But look at what we get if we provide ChatGPT with this prompt:

explain No, no, you naughty Christine!
You’;ve ruined the Tory machine.
For to lie in the nude,
Is just a bit rude
But to lie in the House is obscene.

It returns a good exposition of the poem!

The limerick you've shared is a satirical poem about the Profumo Affair, and it plays on the double meanings of the word "lie" and the scandal's impact on British politics. Here's a breakdown of its meaning:

1. "No, no, you naughty Christine!"
Christine Keeler is being addressed directly here. The word "naughty" is used somewhat playfully but also with a hint of moral judgment, referring to her involvement in the scandalous affair with John Profumo.

2. "You’ve ruined the Tory machine."
The "Tory machine" refers to the Conservative Party (often called "Tories") and its political apparatus. The scandal involving Christine Keeler and John Profumo led to severe damage to the party's reputation and was a factor in their eventual electoral defeat. The phrase suggests that Keeler's involvement was instrumental in causing significant harm to the Conservative Party.

3. "For to lie in the nude, Is just a bit rude"
This line plays on the word "lie." In this context, "lie in the nude" refers to engaging in sexual activities or being physically intimate, which might be considered "rude" or socially improper, especially in the conservative society of the time.

4. "But to lie in the House is obscene."
Here, "lie" has a double meaning. The first refers to the act of lying or being untruthful. "The House" refers to the House of Commons, where John Profumo lied when he denied his affair with Christine Keeler. The poem suggests that while being nude (and engaging in an affair) is socially improper, lying to Parliament is far more serious and "obscene."

Overall Meaning:
The limerick humorously contrasts the moral impropriety of sexual indiscretion ("lying in the nude") with the greater sin of political dishonesty ("lying in the House"). It implies that while the affair itself was scandalous, it was Profumo's lie to the House of Commons that was truly damaging and morally unacceptable, leading to the downfall of the Conservative Party, or "Tory machine."

ChatGPT even gets the subtle point that in British politics, a sex scandal is unsavory but survivable, but if a minister of state tells a lie in the House of Commons, he is done for.

So what is left for a well-educated human to do? I tried a third test. Could ChatGPT write a limerick? I prompted it with “Write a limerick about the Profumo Affair.” Here is its answer.

In the halls of Westminster, they say,
A scandalous secret did sway,
When Profumo did lie,
It caused quite a cry,
And the Tories would dearly pay.

Neither in rhythm nor in meaning does it match up to mine. So humans do have a purpose even in the days of artificial intelligence. We can write limericks.⁴

Footnotes

1. I remember one night after a debate we all piled into cars and went down around midnight to White Castle. Being the only white people and the only people in tie and jacket, we stood out, but it turned out the place was very lively on that warm night. Mr. S., who sometimes was called nasty, British, and short (though he wasn’t the first two and wasn’t that short), did have a slight difficulty. Somebody came up to him and asked for money for hamburgers. He said, “You don’t want to eat those hamburgers; they’re awful! They’re disgusting! and the fellow turned away with a laugh.

2. “A poem that has to be explained in notes is not unlike a picture with ‘This is a dog’ inscribed beneath,” J. Lucas said. I much admire Lucas (a now-obscure English critic), so I am sorry to see that. I found the quotation in an excellent article by Jed Rasula, “Why (Most) Critics Hated The Waste Land When It Was Published,” in Literary Hub (2022). I doubt my poem will be hated anywhere near as much, alas.

3. At least, since a limerick by its form can’t be too long, I didn’t need Ezra Pound as an editor. Substack won’t do footnotes to footnotes, but I wish it did so I could discuss the letters my college roommate, the chemist Arden Johnson, has sent me over the years. He has footnotes down to an art form, and the first sentence of this footnote reminds me of him.

4. Profumo, by the way, was done for in politics, but spent the next 40 years doing charity work for the poor. By the time he died, he was very much admired, and, indeed, very much honorable. He did well after his political career and before it, when he was a hero in North Africa in World War II. Politics has its special temptations of fornication and dishonesty.