Gentle inaugurated; the Office of Unspecified Services; a "Tighter, Tidier Nation"

pivotal · background, the millennial transition

• When: background, Gentle's Inauguration (the first C.U.S.P. presidency); parodied at the I.-Day screening
• What: Gentle takes office as the first U.S. President from a third party — "managing somehow to look presidential in a Fukoama microfiltration mask," and, per the film, the "first U.S. President ever to say shit publicly" — his white-suited Office of Unspecified Services (O.U.S., Chief Rodney Tine) requiring Inauguration-goers to scrub, mask, and walk chlorinated footbaths. His Inaugural heralds a "Tighter, Tidier Nation," an "essentially aesthetic" program of national renewal, hosing down the streets and refocusing blame onto "some cohesion-renewing Other." In the film's second-year beat, Gentle honorarily appoints the Presidente of Mexico and P.M. of Canada as "Secretaries" of their own countries — "as if the neighbors had already become sort of post-millennial American protectorates," an ominousness Mario scores with a wavered D-minor on Mrs. Clarke's Wurlitzer — the first foreshadowing of continental absorption. See the Johnny Gentle and Rodney Tine character material.