Eleanor Clift

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Eleanor Clift
Born	Eleanor Roeloffs 7 July 1940 (1940-07-07) (age 69) Brooklyn, New York, USA
Education	Hunter College
Occupation	Journalist
Spouse	William Brooks Clift, Jr. Tom Brazaitis (1989 - 2005†)
Notable credit(s)	Newsweek The Los Angeles Times

Eleanor Clift (born July 7, 1940) is an American political reporter, television pundit and author. She is currently a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine. Her column, "Capitol Letter" is posted each week on the Newsweek and MSNBC websites. She is a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated show The McLaughlin Group, which she has compared to "a televised food fight".^[1] She is also a political contributor for the Fox News Channel.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Career 1.3 Personal life 2 Bibliography 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Born Eleanor Roeloffs in Brooklyn, New York, she grew up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, where her parents ran a deli in Sunnyside.^[2] She went on to attend Hofstra University and Hunter College. She began her career as a secretary at Newsweek, and one of the first female reporters to earn an internship from the secretary pool. She began her 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Career

Mrs. Clift is on the political left nearly 100% of the time. 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.^[3]

"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.^[4][5]

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, publicly and personally.

[edit] 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. She married Tom Brazaitis, Washington columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in September 1989. They remained together until his death of kidney cancer on 30 March 2005.^[6][7]

[edit] Bibliography

• Clift, Eleanor (1996). War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684800845. 
• Clift, Eleanor (2000). Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684856190. 
• Clift, Eleanor (2003). Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471426121. 
• Clift, Eleanor (2004). Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect in the Future. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 1586482939. 
• Clift, Eleanor (2008). Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 046500251X. 

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Eleanor Clift official website
• Capitol Letter column on MSNBC
• FOX News Biography
• Keynote speaker profile
• Eleanor Clift at the Internet Movie Database
• Inner Compass - "Women in Political Leadership" TV Interview
• Inner Compass - "Women in Political Leadership" audio mp3