The night eventually sank into a beer garden atmosphere rather than the subdued ballroom elegance expected of a state dinner. After dispensing with our national dance troupe and famed choral singers, three cabinet secretaries were called to the stage to sing Barack’s favorite songs. It was a medley of Motown hits, the only discernible one (the rest being atrociously off key probably due to inebriation) was “What’s Going On” with Marvin Gaye squirming in his grave.

The rest of Barack’s time in the country wasn’t efficiently used. There was a press conference, a look at an electric car, the visit to the American Military Cemetery and off he went.

In Kuala Lumpur there was a speech and town hall talks with University of Malaya students and a visit to the National Mosque. In Seoul, he returned two important artifacts once “taken” by an American marine during the Korean War. In Japan, he delivered remarks to science students at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.

It’s a pity that Barack didn’t interact with our own youths who no longer possess the historical sensitivity to Philippine-American relations as previous generations do. They’re going to deal with a changed world, a more robust if not powerful China and an American presence, vague in size and scope, which was just codified into an agreement with no congressional and public consultation. If the younger generations are deprived of understanding this game change in the Pacific, they have only the radical left to take their cues from. Or the banality of a consumerist society to stew in.

Barack gave signals leaving us to take the lead with regards, to plod through international arbitration and gather other allies in the neighborhood to strengthen our collective claims. We can at least bid him a hearty goodbye for not coming in as a saber rattler like his predecessors who pushed us into wars not of our choosing.

The nasty aftertaste came from our own government’s welcome. It was the underside of that “fiesta” culture where propriety is thrown out the window, where a costly dinner that included as invited guests scoundrels that should have been jailed a long time ago, that was an insult to the still suffering and devastated south. What could have been a dignified love fest degenerated into a karaoke session. Any wonder why the Americans might think less of us than they do our Asian neighbors?

Even sadder were racist jokes that compared Barack’s complexion to that of Vice President Jejomar Binay (who greeted him at the airport), which proliferated in cyberspace and made the rounds at the state dinner. It’s another local penchant, making cruel and offensive jokes. If the NSA picked that up on their eavesdropping system and passed it on to Barack, this could be his first and only visit to “It’s more fun in the Philippines.”