Eleanor Clift

Eleanor Clift
Born	Eleanor Roeloffs (1940-07-07) July 7, 1940 Brooklyn, New York, USA
Education	Hofstra University Hunter College
Occupation	Journalist
Notable credit(s)	The Daily Beast MSNBC
Spouse(s)	William Brooks Clift, Jr. Tom Brazaitis (1989 - 2005†)
Children	Edward Montgomery Clift Woodbury Blair Clift Robert Anderson Clift
Relatives	Montgomery Clift (brother-in-law)
Website	eleanorclift.com

Eleanor Clift (born July 7, 1940) is an American liberal political reporter, television pundit, and author. She is currently a contributor to MSNBC and blogger for The Daily Beast. She is a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated show The McLaughlin Group, which she has compared to "a televised food fight".

Clift is a board member at the IWMF (International Women's Media Foundation).

Early years

Clift was born Eleanor Roeloffs in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of German immigrants from the island of Föhr in the North Sea. She grew up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, where her parents ran a deli in Sunnyside. Clift was raised a Lutheran and attended Hofstra University and Hunter College. She began her career in 1963 as a secretary at Newsweek, and is one of the first female reporters to earn an internship from the secretary pool. Clift later became White House correspondent for Newsweek and has covered every presidential campaign for the magazine since 1976. She began a broadcast career on The Diane Rehm Show on WAMU-FM, Washington, D.C., as a Friday week-in-review panelist. She became known to listeners for her good-natured acceptance of ribbing from other panelists and callers to the program.

Career

During the Clinton administration, she was jokingly referred to as "Eleanor Rodham Clift" or "Eleanor Rodham Clifton", because of her fierce defense of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton. Clift has made some memorable comments on The McLaughlin Group:

"The GAO will finally issue its report on the White House—the vandalizing of the White House in between the Clinton-Gore administration—Clinton and Bush administrations. (Laughter) Well, it should have been the Gore administration." February 23, 2002.

"But I think what we're coming to grips with is the fact that we actually have a mercenary Army, and it doesn't have a nice ring to it. We call it 'volunteers', but we're basically paying people to serve their country. And if you're going to pay people and have a mercenary Army, you're going to have to pay the market rate. And so the bounties are going up—more money for tuition, higher enlistment bonuses—and I think it's appropriate." August 27, 2005.

"I would like to point out Ambassador Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke inhalation. . ." May 11, 2014.

She has appeared in four movies. She played a talk show panel member in Rising Sun (1993), and appeared as herself in Dave (1993), Independence Day (1996) and Getting Away with Murder (1996). She was also recently portrayed by actress Mary Ann Burger in the 2009 film Watchmen.

In 2008, she wrote Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics which intertwines the events of her own life and those of the nation concerning the Terri Schiavo case during a two-week period in March 2005. In it she examines the way people in the United States deal with death, publicity and personality. She wrote in the book, “Religion and politics are supposed to be separate.”

She was a keynote speaker at the 2012 Washington & Jefferson College Energy Summit, where the Washington & Jefferson College Energy Index was unveiled.

Honors

• Hoover Institution William and Barbara Edwards Media Fellow September 16–22, 2002

Personal life

Clift's first marriage was to William Brooks Clift, Jr. (1919–1986), the brother of the actor Montgomery Clift. They had three sons: Edward Montgomery, Woodbury Blair, and Robert Anderson. In September 1989, she married Tom Brazaitis, a Washington columnist for the The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. They remained together until his death of kidney cancer on 30 March 2005.

Bibliography

• Eleanor Clift and Matthew Spieler (2012). Selecting a President. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-1-250-00449-9

Further reading

• Clift, Eleanor, "The Magazine That Was: Eleanor Clift on Her 50 Years at Newsweek", Newsweek, September 27, 2013
• Clift, Eleanor, "The White House", newsweekmemories.org website

External links

• Eleanor Clift official website
• Eleanor Clift at the Internet Movie Database
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Clift and Brazaitas on War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics, August 25, 1996.