The gag in Before Dishonor entertained me far more than this wall of text explaining why I shouldn't find it funny.
I remember at the time the joke really bugged me because I had done a lot of reading about the reclassification of Pluto. The bit in the novel struck me as a *very* layperson's misunderstanding of the whole issue. If someone found the joke funny, that's great, but it really strained credibility for me that a 24th century spacefaring organization would still be wrestling with the issue. It was cute, but bugged me for the scientific illiteracy (which, at the time, was understandable because the issue wasn't well-understood by the layperson).
Even aside from that, it felt too topical, tying the book too much to a contemporary pop-culture meme. I suspect that if I'd tried to include a reference like that, my editor would've advised against it.