"...and a comment about taking someone “to the woodshed over this” — led the pilot this morning to dump the plane’s fuel and make an unscheduled landing in Los Angeles."

Sounds to me like the pilot might have been possibly given severely exaggerated hearsay by the flight attendant, that or the pilot way over reacted to the comment. There's nothing threatening about that comment as was stated by the airport police. In either case, the Peoples Republic of Hawaii mambi pambi union crybabies need to grow up already and get off their high horse as it seems that the passenger's rant was overblown like our rail budget.