Anyone invoking H.L. Mencken can’t be all bad.

The turn-of-the-last-century journalist from Baltimore was, depending on your take on the world, famous or infamous for his aggressive, poignantly written, curmudgeonly, even cynical columns.

With the possible exception of scientists, Mencken aimed his thunderbolts at everyone and anyone, but he particularly liked to skewer the government, politicians and the clergy.

I was fascinated with the man’s work.

It was in the late 1960s after I had returned from Vietnam, was stationed in Baltimore and considered, upon discharge, taking a crack at newspapering.

Mencken had been dead for more than a decade, but, given the politics and mood of the nation at the time, I was intrigued with someone who wrote, according to biographer Terry Teachout, that government “… in virtually all of its existing forms … is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.”

That goes down pretty well when you are 24 and just a little cynical about the ruling class.

Forty years later, it would seem there is at least one other Mencken fan in Central Oregon.

Frank Groves, of Sisters, is also a Mencken and Bulletin fan, but someone who believes Mencken would have fumed at our coverage of former President Clinton and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, when they campaigned here.

“The recent coverage,” Groves wrote in a opinion published last week, “of the visits of presidential candidates was the work of sycophants (servile flatterer, fawning parasite, for those who do not recognize this word).”

“If I ran a newspaper,” he added, “I would ensure that my reporters were well acquainted with H.L. Mencken as an inoculation against sycophancy.”

As I said, it is hard to get angry with a fellow Mencken fan, especially one who otherwise likened The Bulletin to a “local treasure.” That said, I’m baffled by what sparked Groves’ reaction.

Like them or not, believe them or not, the visit of two men — one a former president, one hoping to become president — to Bend is news. Certainly, the several thousand people who showed up to see and listen to them would agree.

Whatever we think of their views, it seems important to me, after decades of covering and watching politicians, that we record what political hopefuls are saying.

That’s essentially what we did with Obama and Clinton.

Some might argue that we did too much or too little, but essentially we added to the first draft of history.

If that is all The Bulletin ever published about these men, or any other candidate for that matter, then Groves’ point would be very well taken.

But it’s not.

We rely on several news services — including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times — for coverage of national issues, including presidential politics. From their work we regularly publish issue analyses, as well as an array of editorial commentary.

Our own reporters constantly challenge candidates for local and state offices, and to make sure we keep an eye on what they do in office, we have opened bureaus in Salem and Washington.

That doesn’t add up to sycophancy to me. Rather, it adds up to expensive watchdog journalism, one of our principle responsibilities.

Mencken was undeniably a genius, but also, as a person, no day at the beach. The Bulletin may well have joined the great corps of his targets.

As Teachout suggests in his recent biography, you could be in good company if he targeted you, because Mencken could be obtuse, unnecessarily insulting and, frankly, a bigot in his work.

Writing in his diaries of the soldiers of World War II, he said, “I find it difficult to work up any regret for the heroes butchered in World War II. Anyone silly enough to believe in such transparent quacks as Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill leaves the world little the loser by departing from it.”

Yes, there’s a lot reporters can learn from Mencken.

There’s also a lot they should avoid.