1. Trouble on the waterfront. White longshoremen, members of a union rife with open nepotism, go on strike at grain docks on the Columbia River, management brings in black strikebreakers, and racial nastiness ensues.
This is not a one-off episode. There is a huge amount of multigenerational animosity between longshoremen and port owners. It’s so bad and enduring that I’m inclined to think that the whole port industry in the US (and probably in many other countries, where it is at the very least corrupt) is deeply poisoned.
2. In which a tweaker named Axmaker stabs a man named Savage, then sings “Girl on Fire” over the dispatch radio from a stolen sheriff’s patrol car. The uncanny names of the parties only add to the righteousness of a scenario that was fated to someday happen somewhere between Tacoma and Medford.
3. Portlandia absolutely has to “honor” this bizarre tale from the Portland Police Bureau. The episode should be called “Nazi Behind the Bush.” Radley Balko originally brought Captain Mark “Ehrenbaum” Kruger to my attention when Kruger was controversially chosen to teach a leadership course to other police commanders, but the back story is even better, as it involves apparent collusion on the part of other city officials to hide evidence of Kruger’s scandalously Germanic extracurricular activities, an aptly named sensitivity course called “Tools for Tolerance,” a deputy city attorney named Manlove, and, Scout’s honor, a Cmdr. Famous.
4. Not quite the Majors-Cullen school of excellence in nursing, but still, smart money says that Jeffrey Neyle McAllister, RN, will be taking a long-term disciplinary assignment at Dr. Kitzhaber’s Big House.
There are at least two kickers to this story. First, the Oregon State Board of Nursing renewed McAllister’s license without disciplinary provisions while he was under police investigation for sexually assaulting patients. Second, a double kicker from McAllister’s employment history: before being hired as an RN, he worked as a hospital security guard and as a municipal police officer in the cities of Independence, Beaverton and Seaside.