Repeal "Max Barry Day"

The InstaRepeal™ of Max Barry Day was an ill-conceived, incredibly rude, unbelievably sexist, dreadfully unfunny, insanely fun-sucking and blatantly illegal waste of time authored by those damn Kennyites, who upon its passage would celebrate their second successful UN repeal. The first and only repeal of an Education and Creativity resolution, the proposal contained a few glaring and deliberate "metagaming" offenses and RL allusions, but the moderators allowed it to proceed to vote anyway, some think in retaliation for all those nitwits who were constantly bitching at them for letting the original resolution go to vote just ten days earlier. Together with Repeal "Common Sense Act II" and Repeal "Rights of Minorities and Women", Repeal "Max Barry Day" rounded out the so-called "hat trick of hilariously written repeals" that highlighted the UN's agenda in the fall of 2007.

History

The third successful "instant repeal" in UN history (after Repeal "Promotion of Solar Panels" and Repeal "Right to Divorce" in the latter half of 2005), Repeal "Max Barry Day" was introduced just one day after voting began on the original resolution, and passed two weeks later.

With many in the United Nations predicting grim consequences if Max Barry Day were allowed to pass and thus "break the fourth wall," others shrieking about "the Apocalypse" and "Noobageddon," still others claiming their confidence in the Secretariat's leadership had been shattered, a chorus of voices clamoring for a hero to rescue them from the impending crisis, and Barack Obama being unavailable, the world as one turned to its last desperate hope, Ambassador Susa Batko-Yovino and the Kennyites. "You've just volunteered to save the world! How does it feel?" a reporter asked the Xt'Tap icon, who responded by demonstrating he could flawlessly burp all three stanzas of his national anthem. Such leadership comes along only once in a generation.

Proposal draft

Susa getting kicked in the nuts by a Catholic schoolgirl. /wiki

Few issues arose during drafting -- which was fortunate considering the supporters had just four days to submit the final product -- though some did object to "kicking Ausserland in the nuts," as the first draft purported to do. The language was altered to extend the punishment to unnamed "ambassadors," but still met with opposition when the repeal came to vote. (Keep reading.) Bast, the feline adviser to the Ardchoillean delegation, insisted that the description of the original document's purpose, "to recognize truly great men and their accomplishments," was exclusionary to women and should be changed. The Kennyites threw the cat a bone by inserting (and quickly removing) language recognizing the accomplishments of "truly great women and asexual sapient slugs." In retaliation, Ardchoille threatened to found a puppet called "Asexual Sapient Slugs" and charge OMGTKK with branding, but reneged on its promise (though a similarly named nation was discovered later). The Hackians instructed the authors to omit a reference to "Africanized honey bees," and so it was replaced with a renewed call to "eradicate the Arctocephalinae," which also raised hackles during voting.

The real problem came when it was time to start telegramming delegates to support the proposal. Forging a "coalition of the willing" to help spread the word could have proven difficult: all the old UN alliances had long since been dissolved; even the "Unholy Trinity" had broken up when Gruenberg left the UN and Cluichstan went insane. With no one left to turn to, Batko-Yovino extended the hand of friendship to the fluffy apostates of Ariddia, Goobergunchia, Gobbannium and Rubina. He even took off the joybuzzer first. With their assistance, the repeal sailed to quorum.

Floor debate

Batko-Yovino's repeal garnered praise and sighs of relief from a core group of UN regulars once it got to vote. Large regions that had opposed Max Barry Day from the start also registered their support on the first day of voting, giving the repeal an early boost. The Kennyites' defense of their resolution opened with a plea for support from UN adviser (and future president) Sammy Faisano, who attempted to excuse and explain away the repeal's various flaws and illegalities, and exhorted his colleagues: "Go on, be a rebel. You know you want to." This led the Lots of Ants representative to decry the offenses outlined in Faisano's speech, and announce her opposition, claiming with a straight face that the bit about "randomly kicking ambassadors in the nuts" was sexist. (We, uhh, wish we were joking about this, but sadly, it's all true.) Others called the repeal ironic, in that it professed to "waste the UN's time" on repealing a resolution the repeal itself supposedly called a "waste of time." The OMGTKK delegation countered that the repeal only criticized the resolution as a sign of misplaced priorities, not a "waste of time." Inexplicably enough, a few delegations defiantly condemned the rules and said proposal writers shouldn't have to follow them.

Rubina's Leetha Talone, who at another time might have criticized the Kennyites for repealing without replacing, stoutly defended the repeal, declaring that the "bad boys of the UN are back at it again," while backup singers (who we think called themselves the "Rubinelles") entertained the General Assembly with their own version of Michael Jackson's "Bad." This prompted Batko-Yovino to dance about the chamber, implementing the repeal's final clause on various members of the opposition. Altanar also offered to help enforce the resolution by introducing the Altanari Nut-Kicker v1.0. Even so, many delegations, prizing their nuts, couldn't help but claim noncompliance.

The repeal eventually passed, albeit by 365 votes fewer than the original resolution did, sparking celebrations at UN Headquarters, and riots in the Kennyite capital of Paradise City.

Resolution text

Category:	Repeal	Resolution:	#223	Proposed By:	Omigodtheykilledkenny

Theeeeeere he is...Miss Omigodtheykilledkeeeeeeennyyyyyy!...

Description: UN Resolution #223: Max Barry Day (Category: Education and Creativity; Area of Effect: Educational) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

Argument: These here fine United Nations,

Commending Resolution #223's laudable purpose, to recognize truly great men and their achievements;

Duly congratulating this resolution's intended honoree on his many titles from coed beauty pageants throughout the NS world;

Expressing its concern, however, that this resolution breaches the reasonable limits to which this body has traditionally held itself;

Chagrined that amidst the many serious problems the world faces today, including war, terrorism, poverty, oppression, corruption, pestilence, disease, famine, malnourishment, starvation, taxes, illiteracy, substandard education, substandard sex education, imperial measurements, necrophilia, space junk, nations not labeling chemicals correctly, shortages of computers for schoolchildren, invisible tree people, shortages of computers for invisible tree schoolchildren, rampant ecclesiastical self-defenestration, and reluctance to eradicate the Arctocephalinae, the United Nations would actually pass a resolution declaring an international holiday for some dude who started a Website suggests that this institution's priorities are somewhat out of whack;

Randomly kicking ambassadors in the nuts for even thinking this proposal was a good idea,

Hereby repeals Resolution #223: Max Barry Day.

Gameplay impacts

At issue in the debate over both the repeal and the original resolution was Max Barry Day's blatant violation of game rules, and Secretariat claims of the administration's powerlessness to remove a resolution after it had gone to vote. Many were asking why the powers-that-be could not simply remove the resolution from the books, as they had done before. Moderators said that the removal of passed resolutions was simply not done, except in extreme circumstances, because of complications in the game code. The one chance moderators had to prevent an illegal resolution from becoming law was deleting it before it went to vote, and they had missed it this time. Repeal proponents called their resolution an enforcement of game rules, and asserted that resolution writers would be more inclined to respect the rules if they were upheld by a vote of the UN.

For this reason, and for the humor applied in the proposal text, Repeal "Max Barry Day" was voted the "Best Resolution of 2007," in a poll sponsored by Cobdenia.

Forum poll

Rather than simply asking debate participants their stance on the up-or-down vote, as in many forum polls, the Kennypoll™ for this vote sought to track the "internal numbers," or members' motivations for voting the way they did. The poll revealed that a stunning 26% were voting at the direction of "His Royal Highness, the Prince of Ausserland," 12% thought the repeal sponsors were "lousy ingrates," 9% thought the repeal was "offensive," 10% wanted to "Barry" something in the Thessadorian Ambassador (if you know what I mean), 3% were soliciting bribes for their support, 8% wanted the truth, 5% couldn't handle the truth, 6% were fond of shoot 'em up smilies, 6% were mesmerized by "yellow matter custard," 15% said they were "the Walrus," and 100% had been kicked in the nuts.