Rep. Mike Chippendale (R, Coventry, Foster, Glocester) writes to request that I note his position on the total boycott of WPRO as identical to Allan Fung’s — namely, that he’s not going to appear on John DePetro’s morning show, but is not going to shun the other hosts.  According to Chippendale, his name was on the list of politicians who’ve signed on to the whole-station boycott, but it appears to have been removed, at least on the For Our Daughters site.

Simply because of the proximity of this morning’s reading, as I skimmed the list, the names of Rep. John Edwards (D, Portsmouth, Tiverton) and Sen. Louis DiPalma (D, Little Compton, Middletown, Newport, Tiverton) stand out.  Earlier, I noted their confidence that they can sway the legislature to eliminate the tolls on the Sakonnet River Bridge, and the two issues seem to sit together uncomfortably.

Do Edwards and DiPalma mean to say that if the push to eliminate the tolls comes to a head — hits one of those points in politics at which every Rhode Islander who can be reached with a message could be critical — they’ll refuse to reach out to the audiences of Gene Valecenti, Dan Yorke, Buddy Cianci, Matt Allen, Tara Granahan, Steve Klamkin, John Loughlin, the station’s news reporters, and even Rep. Deborah Ruggiero (D, Jamestown, Middletown), who has a Sunday show called “Amazing Women”?

That says a great deal not only about the general civic blindness of Rhode Island’s governing class, but also the specific priorities of the people on that list.