Eleanor Irene Clift (''

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

'' Roeloffs; born July 7, 1940) is an American political journalist, television pundit, and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

. She is a contributor to

MSNBC MSNBC is an American cable news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Launched on July 15, 1996, and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the channel primarily broadcasts r ...

and blogger for '' The Daily Beast''. She is best known as a regular panelist on '' The McLaughlin Group''. Clift is a board member at the IWMF (International Women's Media Foundation).

Early years

Eleanor Roeloffs was born in the New York City borough of

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, the daughter of German immigrants from the island of Föhr in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

. She grew up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

, where her parents ran a delicatessen in Sunnyside. Clift was raised a

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

. She attended both

Hofstra University Hofstra University is a Private university, private research university in Hempstead, New York, United States. It originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University and became an independent college in 1939. Comprising ten schools, includ ...

and

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

, but left both schools without a degree.

Journalism career

Clift began her career in 1963 as a secretary at ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'', and was one of the first female reporters to earn an internship from the secretary pool. Working out of Atlanta, Clift became the reporter assigned to cover the then-unlikely candidate,

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...

. Clift traveled with the campaign and reported from the road. After Carter's win, Clift became White House correspondent for ''

'' and has covered every presidential campaign for the magazine since 1976. When Newsweek merged with '' The Daily Beast'' in 2010, Clift stayed on to cover politics for the online publication.

Broadcasting career

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. She became a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated show '' The McLaughlin Group'', which she has compared to "a televised food fight".Press Forum
/ref> Her role as a

talk show A talk show is a television programming, radio programming or podcast genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show', pp.3-4Erler, Robert (201 ...

panelist has led to appearances in movies. Clift played a panelist in '' Rising Sun'' (1993) and appeared as herself in '' Dave'' (1993), ''

Independence Day An independence day is an annual event memorialization, commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or Sovereign state, statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or after the end of a milit ...

'' (1996) and '' Getting Away with Murder'' (1996). She was portrayed by Jan Hooks on Saturday Night Live. She was also 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 was a keynote speaker at the 2012

Washington & Jefferson College Washington & Jefferson College (W&J College or W&J) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Washington, Pennsylvania, United States. The college traces its origin to three Presbyterian m ...

Energy Summit, where the Washington & Jefferson College Energy Index was unveiled. Contributing to the anthology ''Our American Story'' (2019), Clift addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative and focused on America as a social movement,

writing Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...

, " cial movements are America's story, and they're my story as a woman born in the middle of the last century whose life was made measurably better amid these broad strokes of history."

Honors

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

Personal life

Clift married William Brooks Clift Jr. (1919–1986), the older brother of actor Montgomery Clift, in 1964 with whom she had three sons. They divorced in 1981. In 1989, Clift married Tom Brazaitis, a Washington columnist for ‘‘The Plain Dealer’’ in Cleveland, Ohio. They remained together until his death from kidney cancer in 2005.

Bibliography

* * * * * * Eleanor Clift and Matthew Spieler (2012). ''Selecting a President''. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.

References

External links

Eleanor Clift official website
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Clift, Eleanor 1940 births Living people American columnists American women columnists American political commentators American political writers American people of German descent Television personalities from Brooklyn American women television personalities Hoover Institution Edwards Media Fellows Hunter College alumni Newsweek people Journalists from Brooklyn People from Jackson Heights, Queens Hofstra University alumni Journalists from Queens, New York