BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Longtime Buffalo politics blogger Alan Bedenko doesn't write about sports and never expected to be writing about hockey star Patrick Kane.
"My blog is sort of my daily letter to the editor so I don't wake up one morning with an agenda already set for me. It's kind of reactionary. I react to things that I see in the press," the Daily Public columnist said.
Bedenko said in general, Buffalo television, radio and newspaper outlets have been very responsible in reporting about accusations Kane raped a young woman, but he said an article with comments from a local bar owner didn't sit well with him.
"The reason that I hooked into the issue of victim shaming in this Pat Kane case was due to what Mark Croce said and the way in which it was published by The Buffalo News," he said.
The insurance defense litigation attorney has since written a series of columns about the Kane story and "victim shaming."
"I just didn't want it to become a situation where we are giving all of the benefit of the doubt to the very popular hockey player who's a legend in his own time and we don't offer at least a modicum of respect for a woman who says he committed an act of violence against her," Bedenko said.
The columns have gained attention not just in Western New York but from media outlets in Chicago and even nationally with blogs like Deadspin referencing his work.
"Because I knew Chicago was a big city and that that was a big market and that he was a big name in that market, I had a suspicion that it might get picked up but I didn't expect anything along these lines," he said.
Monday, another unlikely source was apparently paying attention to Bedenko's latest commentary, titled Patrick Kane's Designated Driver Opens His Yap. Messages began to appear from a Facebook account linked to Kane's attorney Paul Cambria responding to the author and other commentors.
"I think that he thought that I had written something that he perceived to be unfair," Bedenko said. "He wanted to let me know it and he wanted to weigh in terms of what people were saying, whether they were unnamed sources or whether they were willing to go on the record."
When Time Warner Cable News contacted Cambria about the comments, he responded the same way he has for the past two weeks: no comment.
Ironically, Bedenko wrote in his column Monday that he was advising everybody to follow that same policy.