Boston Globe Digs Through Bill Belichick's Ancestry, Finds Nothing Controversial
By Matt Dolloff, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- If some of you could just put your journalistic elitism aside for a moment, you could admit what you know has become plainly obvious in recent months: the Boston Globe has it out for Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the Patriots.
How many times is the Globe, currently owned by Red Sox principal owner John Henry, going to sic investigative reporter Bob Hohler on the Patriots before everyone realizes what they're ostensibly trying to do? Their agenda started to plainly show in April, when Hohler reported on Tom Brady's clandestine earnings from his own Best Buddies charity, some of which he used to fund his own personal charities. The reporting itself was fair and accurate - and both Brady and Best Buddies, while engaging in common practices, were admittedly not as transparent as they could have been.
But the reporting itself wasn't the problem with that story. It was the underlying intentions. Assigning Hohler to dig for potential misgivings by Brady and Best Buddies, while largely ignoring the dark sides of charities run by other famous New England athletes (like, say, David Ortiz), was unseemly at best.
The Globe's quest for dirt on the Patriots, primarily Brady or Bill Belichick, started even before the Best Buddies story. Hohler penned a feature story on Brady back in March that sifted through the quarterback's ancestry and family history, which traces back to 19th-century Boston. Now, he's done the same with Belichick.
Unfortunately for Hohler and the Globe, who got assistance from an amateur genealogist named Jim McNiff, they didn't find anything too sinister. Instead, they discovered that Belichick is a distant relative of Clint Eastwood, Hugh Hefner, Warren Buffett, J.P. Morgan, and former presidents William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland, among other famous figures.
Perhaps someone at the Globe was secretly hoping to discover connections between Belichick and some of the darker, uglier aspects of American history, like slavery. Instead, they discovered that Belichick is a distant relative of John Brown, an iconic abolitionist who famously led an 1859 raid of a U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry in West Virginia.
Here are some other smoking guns that Hohler unearthed from the seedy underbelly of Belichick's ties to New England and American history, most of which trace back to his mother Jeannette:
- Jeannette has ancestors who helped found Hartford, CT, as well as Massachusetts towns like Springfield, Billerica, Burlington, and Woburn.
- Jeannette is a distant relative of Benjamin Munn, a settler who fought against Native American raids in the Pecquot War of 1637.
- Belichick's eighth great-grandmother was murdered by Native Americans in a raid that also killed four children.
- Belichick has several distant relatives on his mother's side who fought for the American army in the Revolutionary War.
There's no hard evidence to support that Hohler or the Globe have any malicious intentions against the Patriots. This is just an opinion from afar. But it's hard to look at these stories - which are, admittedly, well-reported and at times fascinating - without wondering about the timing and their true intentions behind them.
The Globe does often publish some superb investigative reporting with its "Spotlight" team, and this Belichick story is an interesting read - in a vacuum. Considering the Globe's recent glut of investigative reporting on the Patriots, it's hard to doubt that they set out to end up with a headline much more salacious than "There's a world of surprises in Bill Belichick's family history".
They sure found some surprises, just not the ones they were apparently hoping to find.
Matt Dolloff is a writer/producer for CBSBostonSports.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of 98.5 The Sports Hub, CBS, CBS Radio, or any subsidiaries. Have a news tip, question, or comment for Matt? Follow him on Twitter @Dolloff985 and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.
