Celebrity News:

Why not?

Dennis Haysbert, who once played the president on "24," thinks that show helped America get used to the idea of a non-white president.

"People on the street would ask me to run for office," Haysbert told TV Guide. He was even called "Mr. President" during a visit to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in Washington.

"As far as the public is concerned, it did open up their minds and their hearts a little bit to the notion that if the right man came along — I do believe Barack Obama is the right man — that a black man could be president of the United States."

Obama, who is scheduled to speak to supporters this afternoon at Municipal Auditorium, picked up another celebrity endorser over the weekend in author Toni Morrison, the woman who once labeled Bill Clinton "the first black president."

She wrote a note/poem to Obama that included, "In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. …"

No questions

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Mary-Kate Olsen will not be questioned by detectives about Heath Ledger’s death.

"There’s absolutely no indication investigators were going to speak to Mary-Kate Olsen," Kelly said at a news conference. "They determined that they had all the info needed from witnesses who were on scene: That’s the cleaning woman, the masseuse."

Police are waiting for toxicology reports before they decide whether to charge masseuse Diana Wolozin for practicing without a license, Kelly also said Sunday.

Police have said Wolozin made three calls to Olsen before dialing 911 for help, then phoned the 21-year-old actress a fourth time after paramedics arrived.

Ready to rock and roll

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page said Monday he was ready to take the iconic band on a world tour after burning up the stage at last month’s reunion concert in London. But it probably won’t be before September, after singer Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are off the road.

"The amount of work we put into O2 was what you would normally put into a world tour anyway," Page, 64, said of the intense rehearsing the band did for the Dec. 10 concert at London’s O2 Arena.

Page, Plant and bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones were joined at the sold-out benefit show by the late John Bonham’s son Jason on drums.

Page, who was in Japan to promote the new Zeppelin release, "Mothership," said the concert was proof that Led Zeppelin can still perform at its best.

"We wanted people who might not have even been alive in 1980 when we finished to understand what we were," he said.

‘Spartans’ victory

By now you know "Meet the Spartans," a parody of recent films centered on "300," conquered the box office over the weekend even though the film was not screened in advance for critics. Mark Feeney of the Boston Globe called it "way too much of an OK thing" but gave writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who also made the parody "Epic Movie," some credit.

"The best thing in ‘Meet the Spartans’ is the swift kick in the bombast it delivers to the oh-no-not-us homoeroticism of ‘300,’ " he wrote. "When the warriors — all 13 of them — head off to war, they do so singing ‘I Will Survive.’ (The idea is much funnier than the execution, but the execution is still pretty funny.)"

Cleaned out

Daniel D. Thompson has been arrested in Utah on suspicion of having sex with two 14-year-old girls. Thompson used to operate Clean Flix, an Orem, Utah-based company that edited feature films to remove content from R and PG-13 films the company deemed inappropriate for children. It was forced to close in December under legal threats from Hollywood studios.

The girls say Thompson told them the whole Clean Flix business was a front for a pornography studio, and they declined his offer to appear in one. He told authorities the porn tapes in the office were for personal use.