Thank goodness for Jason Wu’s red dress. Because Michelle Obama liked it enough to wear a Wu for a second inaugural in a row, Asian Americans made inaurgural history.

You didn’t see many of us pop up on any of the coverage, besides maybe the Punahou band during the parade, and of course, the ubiquitous Konrad Ng, the Asian American Presidential-brother-in-law.

But that red dress? We must take our collective glory when we can.

That was the high point for Asian Americans.  All that 24 hour coverage of the Inaugural and then it was back to covering shootings for the next 24 hours.

I would have liked to have heard more about Asian Americans in Obama’s address. We were blended into the segment of the speech were the president signalled his progressive vision.

It was fairly generic. Not even a specific mention for Asian Americans on immigration and all those engineers here on special visas. He could have. He didn’t.

But he did give that shout out to gays and lesbians which was a great moment of specificity, as all gays and lesbians have noted.

When I heard it, it was easy to lump it in with the president’s stand on gay/lesbian issues in the past. He’s been hot and cold. But here, he’s on record in a big way, and maybe he’ll come through without any wavering this time. It’s also significant because heretofore,  gays and lesbians haven’t always been embraced as part of the “civil rights agenda.” As the journalists found out at Unity, people of color are people of color and when you include gays, you don’t always have people of color. Sometimes, you get an occasional oppressor. It’s a problem. But nowhere near the historical problem. If Dr. King and the black church represent the foundation of our modern civil rights movement, you know the record of black churches on gays and lesbians has been abysmal. So the inclusion of gays and lesbians so specifically in an inauguration speech on MLK day is a much bigger deal than I originally noted.

But it won’t be a big deal if the president doesn’t make it to the goal line in the next four years. Then it’s just feel-good rhetoric.

Now for the Beyonce matter.

Singers lip-synch all the time in performance. If it’s their voice their lip-synching is a good fail safe. But what’s the difference? We’re not talking Milli Vannili.  It’s her voice. And she’s not Mante Te’o pining for Lennay Kekua living a lie.

OK, James Taylor sang live. So did Kelly Clarkson. Beyonce chose not to. Performer’s choice,really.

Beyonce’s for real. We know that. Of course, those who are appalled are probably still upset about that bad Beyonce movie of a couple years ago.

 It’s a bit of an acting job to lipsynch a song. To mouth it like you mean it. 

But is there a doubt that she has the chops to back it up?

Frankly,  I’d be more concerned if Obama was lip-synching his speech.