Jews in the News: Jake Tapper, Daniel Berger and Max Homa

A Movie Weinstein Won’t Like; Tapper is Joey Bishop; Olympics/US Open

It was just announced that Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan will star in an upcoming film entitled “She Said.” They will play, respectively, Megan Twohey and JODI KANTOR, NY Times reporters who uncovered the HARVEY WEINSTEIN scandal. The film is based on Kantor and Twohey’s 2019 book, “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement“.

Kantor, 42, and Twohey won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing Weinstein’s conduct. When the “She Said” book came out, I wrote that Kantor said this in 2017: “I grew up around people with numbers on their arms—my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. It led me to think about the big questions we often ask in investigative journalism: ‘How could something like this have gone on? What allowed this to happen?’”

“Hellfire Club” (2018), the first novel by CNN anchor JAKE TAPPER, got great reviews and sold well. It’s a “page-turning” thriller about a freshman Congressman, Charles Marder, who uncovers corruption during the height of the ‘50s McCarthy Era. Tapper’s new novel, “The Devil Will Dance”, has just been released. Marder is again a central character. In 1961, Atty. General Robert F. Kennedy assigns Marder to investigate whether Frank Sinatra has Mafia ties. Along the way, Marder meets Sinatra’s “Rat Pack” (Dean Martin, SAMMY DAVIS, Jr, Peter Lawford, and JOEY BISHOP).

On May 17, Seth Meyers remotely talked to Tapper, 51, about his book. He asked Tapper, “Who are you in the CNN Rat Pack? Are you the Sinatra? Or Dean?” Tapper replied, “I am kind of the Joey Bishop. The funny Jewish guy who goes home to his wife at the end of the day. The sweet family man.”  (Video on Youtube).

Meyer laughed and said, “We kind of figured that.”  Earlier in the same video segment, they agreed that HENRY WINKLER, 75, is the “nicest man alive”. Sitting behind Tapper was a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap. Tapper explained that Winkler found out that Tapper, a Philly native, was a Phillies fan. So, he mailed Tapper a signed cap that the late Tug McGraw, a Phillies’ star pitcher, had given to Winkler.

All this month, there will be extensive NBC coverage of the various (American team) qualifying events for the Tokyo Summer Olympics. The Games are scheduled to begin on July 23. I write more about the Olympics after the qualifying events are over.

The US. Open Golf tournament, a four-round “biggie”, begins on Thursday, June 17 (NBC, Golf Channel. The second round (June 18) is also on NBC and the Golf Channel. The third round (June 19) is on NBC. The final round (June 20) is on NBC and the Golf Channel. Check listings for exact coverage times.

Two Jewish golfers have qualified for the Open: DANIEL BERGER, 28, and MAX HOMA, 30.  Berger grew up in Key Biscayne and Jupiter, Florida. He is the son of JAY BERGER, 54, and his wife, NADIA BERGER. Jay, now a tennis coach, was a top pro tennis player. (He was ranked 7th in the world in 1990. For several years he was the head coach of the men’s and women’s tennis teams at Univ. of Miami).

Daniel was on the Florida State Univ (Tallahassee) golf team for two years. He was so good that he dropped out after his sophomore year and turned pro at age 20. Highlights of his pro career include PGA “Rookie of the Year” in 2015; winning his first PGA title in 2016; winning the 2020 Charles Schwab Challenge ($1.3M for 1st place); and winning the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach tournament. He earned $1.4M for that win.

Homa, a California native, grew-up in a Jewish home, went to Hebrew school, and was a bar mitzvah. He joined the pro tour in 2013.  You have to call him “the comeback kid”. He was dropped from the PGA tour in 2017 due to many poor scores. But he did well enough in qualifying events to regain his PGA “card” in 2019 and went on to win his first PGA tournament that year. Last February, he won the Genesis Invitational/AKA the Los Angeles Open ($1.675M for 1st).

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