When you see Carl Bernstein in a pin-striped suit, holding a briefcase and being ferried around the media tents in a golfcart, you know an era has ended.
This guy would not recognise a Deep Throat even if it threw up on him.
But this is Republican National Convention 2000. How many delegates even remember that Richard Nixon was hounded from office thanks to the dogged reporting of Bernstein and Bob Woodward?
There is very little hounding going on at this Republican love-fest in Philadelphia this week. The Police Commissioner, Mr John Timoney from Dublin, even allowed a banned anti-poverty march to parade down the city's main street. Anything to avoid a Seattle-like bust-up.
Mr Timoney, who goes around on a bicycle and a crash helmet, called the march "a little dodgy the first five or six blocks" and said later "if they want to walk, God bless 'em". The 4,000 Republican delegates and their entourages are having a great time being wined and dined as if there were no tomorrow. As the Philadelphia Inquirer put it: "Lunch, brunch, breakfast, dinner, cocktails, nightcaps, bacon and eggs, vodka and caviar, martinis and cigars, even an automobile were being given away, all with great gusto, by corporate America."
Some $20 million will be spent on lobbying at about 1,000 events by the big companies this week. And most of them will be doing the same at the Democratic Convention in a fortnight. No wonder Commissioner Timoney let the poor march down Broad Street.
Union Pacific laid half a mile of track beside the convention centre to show off 30 vintage rail carriages. Invited guests feasted on crab cakes and salmon in the dining cars.
The 15,000 accredited media try to wangle their way into some of these parties without paying the $5,000 entrance fee or even higher. As they usually get turned away, there are sneering articles about the Republicans' taste in music at the parties where former stars like Chubby Checker, the Shirelles and Dick Clark perform.
Columnist Dave Barry, who was kept out of the Daimler-Chrysler party, wrote that "strict Republican by-laws prohibit appearances by any performer who has had any kind of hit since 1974."
Come to think of it, that's also the year Mr Bernstein got rid of Richard Nixon.
No wonder he is riding around in a golfcart.