Anne Hathaway on Barack Obama: "I was afraid to trust him and I was afraid to have hope when I first kind of became aware of him."

"I was kind of afraid of Obama the first time I saw him... I was afraid to trust him and I was afraid to have hope when I first kind of became aware of him. It was around the time that he gave his speech on race that I just said 'I can't deny how I feel about you, Barack Obama.'"

Oh, celebrities, please just keep talking. You don't ever need to know how ridiculous you are. We love you this way.

Afraid to have hope... an interesting fear, really, isn't it? But the human organism produces the fear response for a reason. Contemplate the survival value of the fear of hope.

At the New York Sun... and that scoop about Ahmadinejad's visit to Ground Zero.

Today, I paid a visit to The New York Sun. It's in a great old building on 105 Chambers Street, the Cary Building, which I was told was the oldest cast iron building in the city.



Whether it's actually the oldest or not, I don't know, but it's a landmark, built in 1857. And the look of the place is so distinctive....



... that just as I was trying to ask if the place has been used as a movie set, my host was going on about the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" and working his way toward telling me that this is the desk where Anne Hathaway sits at the end of the movie:



Okay, take a picture of me in the Devil Wears Prada memorial chair (with Joe Goldstein, the Sun's legal reporter):



It was fun sitting in on some newspaper meetings. There was a lot of excitement today over the scoop that Iranian President Ahmadinejad plans to visit Ground Zero -- a visit to be facilitated by Mayor Bloomberg. Here's the story:

President Bush, moving quickly to respond to news that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has asked to visit ground zero, had a spokesman issue a statement aimed at Mayor Bloomberg that said – in so many words -- deal with it.

"This is a matter for the City of New York resolve," a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, Gordon Johndroe, said. He added pointedly: "It seems odd that the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror would visit ground zero."

The White House comment came as news of the proposed visit was being greeted with astonishment and outrage by New Yorkers on both sides of the political spectrum, and also presidential candidates, including Governor Romney and Senator Thompson.

UPDATE: The linked news story has been updated to show that the city is rejecting the Ahmadinejad visit to Ground Zero.