Just bite your tongue

Being obnoxious isn't a crime.

As we reflect on the arc of civil rights dramas from Jim Crow to Jim Crowley, my friend John Timoney, the police chief of Miami, observes: "There's a fine line between disorderly conduct and freedom of speech. It can get tough out there, but I tell my officers, 'Don't make matters worse by throwing handcuffs on someone. Bite your tongue and just leave.' "

As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police. But this time, I'm struggling.

No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sgt. Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.

President Barack Obama was right the first time, that the encounter had a stupid ending, and the second time, that both Gates and Crowley overreacted. His soothing assessment that two good people got snared in a bad moment seems on target.

It escalated into a clash of egos - the hard-working white cop vs. the globe-trotting black scholar, the town vs. the gown, the Lowell Police Academy vs. the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Gates told me Crowley was so "gruff" and unsolicitous "the hair on my neck stood up." Crowley says Gates acted "put off" and "agitated." But the strong guy with the gun has more control than the weak guy with the cane. An officer who teaches racial sensitivity should not have latched on to a technicality about neighbors - who seemed to be outnumbered by cops - getting "alarmed" by Gates' "outburst."

From Shakespeare to Hitchcock, mistaken identity makes for a powerful narrative.

Race, class and testosterone will always be a combustible brew. Our first African-American president will try to make the peace with Gates (who supported Hillary) and Crowley (whose father voted for Obama).

Gates says he's ready for "marriage counseling" from the "Solomon" in the Oval.

"If Sgt. Crowley and the president and I meet, it's clearly not going to be like Judge Joe Brown, OK? 'You tell your side, you tell your side.' We have to agree to disagree. But I would be surprised if somebody didn't say, 'I'm sorry you were arrested,'" he says.

How can they ever reconcile their accounts? Crowley says he asked Gates to come outside and the professor replied, "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside." Gates wryly suggests Crowley got the line from watching "Good Times" as a child.

"Does it sound logical that I would talk about the mother of a big white guy with a gun?" he asked. "I'm 5-7 and 150 pounds. I don't walk on ice, much less (expletive) with some cop in my kitchen. I don't want another hip replacement."

I asked how he felt when he learned that Crowley was the one who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis, the black Boston Celtics basketball star, in a vain attempt to save his life after a heart attack in 1993. He replied: "I don't stereotype. I never saw him as the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe he was just having a bad day."

And Gates says that if anyone thinks he's a fiery black militant, they've got the wrong guy, considering he married a white woman, has mixed-race daughters and has white blood himself.

Mike Barnicle warns that the next time Gates needs 911, he should call the Harvard faculty lounge instead. But Gates ripostes, "I have a feeling the Cambridge police will be especially attentive to my needs."