I'll definitely take one of the funded PhD spots somewhere else. What I found ironic about that paragraph was that on the MAPH website, there is a page devoted to a list of PhD humanities programs to which their graduates have been accepted. Kind of like a brag sheet, I guess. All three of the schools where I was accepted/waitlisted are on said list.
I'm trying to decide what/if I should write back or not. After all, the email was personalized, and because I know that academia can be so horribly political, I don't want to start out by giving anyone in the field a bad opinion of me. On the other hand, I found that paragraph to be discourteous and pompous. Ugh. Suggestions?