The usually staid US State Department remained that way on Wednesday offering no official comment on the apparent desires of Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to switch places for a day.
"It would probably make my job kind of interesting for a while, but, no, I don't think I can do that one," spokesman Richard Boucher said when asked to comment on statements made by both Gere and Albright.
"It is something we can contemplate and draw our own conclusions on in private," Boucher told reporters, a wry smile barely crossing his lips.
Later a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed the switch would likely favor Albright.
"Let's put it this way, I think she would enjoy it more than he would," the official said.
Gere opened the subject for discussion on Tuesday October 10th, telling a television interviewer that if he were to spend a day as a woman, he'd like to be Albright.
"The first image that came to mind was the secretary of state," Gere told ABC television's Good Morning America when asked who he would like to be if he could be female for 24 hours.
"I think she is in the middle of doing really important things right now," said Gere, the co-star of Julia Roberts in such hit films as Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride and former husband of supermodel Cindy Crawford.
Wednesday's Washington Post said Albright, who is now hosting the historic visit of a top North Korean official and trying to restore calm to the Middle East among other foreign policy duties, had reacted cautiously but favorably to the idea.
"I might like to be him," the paper quoted Albright as saying. – AFP.
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