JUNE 17 • 2021 | 51

A MOVIE WEINSTEIN 
WON’T LIKE; TAPPER IS 
JOEY BISHOP
It was just announced 
that Carey Mulligan and 
Zoe Kazan will star in 
an upcoming film titled 
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, 46, and Twohey 
won the Pulitzer Prize for 
Public Service for exposing 
Weinstein’s conduct. When 
the She Said book came 
out, I wrote this: [In 2017, 
Kantor told Marie Claire]: 
“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?’”
Jake Tapper’s first 
novel, Hellfire Club (2018) 
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. The CNN 
anchor’s new novel The 
Devil Will Dance has just 
been released. Marder is 
again a central character. 
In 1961, Attorney 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 
had Tapper on to talk 
about his book and 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)
Meyers laughed and 
said, “We kind of figured 
that.”
In another segment, 
they agreed that Henry 
Winkler, 75, is the 
“nicest man alive.” Sitting 
behind Tapper during the 
remote interview, was 
a Philadelphia Phillies’ 
baseball cap. Tapper, 52, 
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. 

MOT ATHLETES
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. After the 
Olympic qualifiers are over, 
I will work with my friends 
at Jewish Sports Review 
magazine, and other friends, 
to “vet” the Olympic teams 
(from any country) and find 
out who the Jewish athletes 
are. I hope to provide an 
“almost complete” list by the 

time the Games begin. 
Vetting can be tough. 
Athletes in so-called minor 
sports, like fencing and 
sailing, rarely have much 
available biographical info. 
But they can win medals, 
too, and sometimes give us 
a reason to “kvell.” In the 
last 20 years, two Jews (a 
man and a woman) won gold 
medals in fencing and two 
Jews (a man and a woman) 
won gold medals in sailing.
Much closer in time is the 
US. Open Golf tournament. 
This four-round “biggie” runs 
from June 17-20 on NBC and 
the Golf Channel.
 Two Jewish golfers have 
qualified for the Open: 
Daniel Berger, 28, and Max 
Homa, 30. Berger, who grew 
up in Florida, 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 
seventh in the world in 1990).
Daniel was so good that 
he 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 $1.4 
million 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 and he’s had an 
up-and-down career. 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 
($1.675 million for first). 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

WIKIPEDIA

Jake 
Tapper

Daniel 
Berger

PGA TOUR

Max 
Homa

 TWITTER

