Barack Obama says Justin Bieber is short

After delivering some remarks about excelling at school work at Bluestone High School in Skipwith, Va., President Barack Obama got this question from one girl: “Do you know Justin Bieber?”

Turns out the president does. The pop music star performed at last year’s White House Easter Egg Roll.

Obama told the girls Bieber is “a very nice young man” and reminded them that Justin has a girlfriend.

The student then wanted to know if Bieber is short?

Disappointment set in when the president said ” Yes, he is short.”

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Watch: Justin Bieber performing at the White House Easter Egg Roll

Her dream came true.

President Barack Obama delivered on his promise to set up a meeting between a New Jersey teen who lost her father on 9/11 and Canadian singing sensation Justin Bieber, according to the New York Post.

During a ceremony at Ground Zero in May, Obama had promised Payton Wall, 14, of Rumson, some face time with her favorite singer after she wrote the president a letter talking about the loss of her father Glen and saying that Bieber’s music inspired her to share the story.

Last Thursday, she got her wish when Bieber was in town to promote his new fragrance, “Someday,” at Macy’s in Herald Square as throngs of raucous fans waited outside.

“It was so cool,” she said, according to the paper. “I couldn’t believe it.”

The teen got to hug the pop phenom with her sister, Avery, 12, and best friend Madison Robertson, 14, who also lost her father, Don, on 9/11.

The girls, who brought along a life-size cutout of President Obama, were nervous at the prospect of meeting Bieber.

“He was really nice and is so cute,” said Avery, according to The Post. “He didn’t even look real.”
After receiving Payton’s letter, Obama invited the girl and her mother to a wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero just days after Osama bin Laden was killed.

During the ceremony, Obama – who jetted into town Thursday for a series of fundraisers as the Macy’s event was wrapping up – told her that he knew Bieber and would try to set up a meeting.

DNA INFO

President Barack Obama has the ability to contact Justin Bieber directly! The 17-year-old pop-singing sensation has agreed to meet a young fan upon request from the White House!

Justin was contacted by the government the same day the president met with a 14-year-old Belieber whose father was one of the many lives lost during the tragic 9/11 attacks, TMZ reports.

Obama famously told the young lady he “knows Justin” and that he would be sure to arrange a meeting between the two — and the president has stayed true to his word.

Payton Wall’s father Glen was an executive at Cantor Fitzgerald when the Twin Towers were attacked almost 10 years ago, and the young fan sent The Biebs a message describing how she was inspired by his documentary, Never Say Never.

“Hey! I have an awful life story and without your music I don’t know if I could have survived,” Payton wrote on Feb. 19, via CBS. “Do you think I could send you a letter?”

When Justin didn’t respond — as it must be difficult with thousands upon thousands of letters he receives from fans — she sent a letter to the head of state, leading the president to make the call to Justin, who is currently on his World Tour.

How did Justin respond?

“Bieber was super-excited about getting the call — and told the White House he will definitely meet the girl when he returns to the U.S. and can get back to the East Coast,” according to TMZ sources.

OK MAGAZINE

After laying a wreath Thursday at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, President Barack Obama lingered to talk with several people who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks.

Among them was 14-year-old Payton Hall, who had written the president a letter about her father, Glen James Wall, who was killed in the Trade Center attacks. Each day, White House staff give the president 10 letters from the public to read on a variety of topics, and on Monday, Payton’s was in the batch.

The White House invited Payton to attend–only to learn that her mother had no clue that her daughter had written the letter. She attended, along with her mother, Diane; sister, Avery, 12 years old; and a friend, Madison Robertson, who also lost her father that day. All four stood behind Obama during the moment of silence.

In her letter, Payton said, she wrote about “the entire day (of Sept. 11, 2001) and how I pictured it happening, and what it’s like to have to have to live without a father.”

But when she met him, Payton said she and the president talked about another aspect of the letter: how she’d originally written it for singer Justin Bieber, hoping to meet him. She decided on a whim to revise it and send it to the White House, even though her sister teased that the president would never read it.

As for the letter, Payton explained: “I wrote to Obama about how Justin Bieber inspired me to tell my story.”

The president offered comfort, but even better, he promised to pull some strings and make sure she meets Bieber the next time he’s in town.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Justin Bieber is more influential online than either Barack Obama or the Dalai Lama, according to findings from social media calculator Klout.

Klout adds together tweets, Facebook likes, pings, mentions on Google, status updates and other social media activity and to give a score out of 100, depending on how often what someone has said gets repeated by others online.

The website has been labelled by technology pundits as one to watch in 2011 and has recently been hired by Disney to carry out research on its behalf.

Bieber has the maximum score of 100, with his tweets being retweeted on average five million times each. Barack Obama scores 88, with his tweets being repeated just 250,000 times on average.