Nothing induces tunnel vision like spending 17 days with a couple of hundred people who make their livings watching TV.

So when someone mentioned to me a few days ago that all the dark-suited men in the Century Plaza's lobby -- and the uniformed L.A. cops on the elevators -- were here because John Edwards was staying in the hotel, my first reaction was to ask why a TV psychic needed all that security, especially in a place where it's not uncommon to run into TV stars on your way to the ice machine.

Sadly, I am not the only one who first thought of John Edward, not John Edwards.

But the veep candidate is gone now (he slept two floors above me) and we are still here...