Still more good news in the election aftermath

From the Free Press:

A group of alumni and former professors of Columbia University warn in a new report that the university could stand to lose up to $3.5 billion a year—or up to 55 percent of the university’s annual operating budget—if Columbia doesn’t start cracking down on campus rule-breaking. 

No argument there, but this stuck in Bickerstaff’s craw.

The report, published by Stand Columbia Society, a ‘politically neutral’ collective working to restore Columbia’s ‘rightful pre-eminence in American—and global—higher education, states the potential financial risks to the university are rooted in Trump and other Republican officials’ ‘enmity for elite institutions in general, and our alma mater in particular.’

He can’t help it, but when your Tatler sees the word “collective” as used in the context above, he, like George C Scott’s General Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove, smells a great big commie rat, and his suspicions are confirmed in the sentence: “The report, published by Stand Columbia Society, a “politically neutral” collective working to restore Columbia’s rightful pre-eminence in American—and global—higher education,” states the potential financial risks to the university are rooted in Trump and other Republican officials ‘enmity for elite institutions in general, and our alma mater in particular.’

Hey, geniuses, no consideration that of all the Ivies, Columbia (Bickerstaff’s alma mater, for what it’s worth) has the largest percentage of Jewish undergrads? That Jewish alums and charities, as well as goyim, might take offense that Columbia’s administration [sic] has stood by doing little or nothing while spoiled lunatic Jew haters wearing kafiyehs have been disrupting and vandalizing university property, as well harassing and attacking other students, with their seemingly constant takeovers of campus grounds and buildings? To lay blame at Trump and Republicans for the loss of revenue is preposterous, when the source of their ire is right in front of them.

That said, the best way to stop the hemorrhaging of revenue because of cowardly  administrators afraid to appear pro-Israel, is no doubt the most effective way to stop this nonsense. Trump and Republicans are merely the bearers of bad news. Those of you with book larnin’ look up “cause and effect.”

h/t WJT

The good news in the election’s aftermath continues

From Fox News: “No Trump bump: MSNBC hemorrhaging viewers since Election Day, sheds more than half of primetime audience. ‘It’s a stale product no one will want to listen to going forward,’ Curtis Houck says

MSNBC host Joy Reid discussed how White women were failing to come out in support for Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.

They still cannot accept that “white women” didn’t “fail to come out,” they rejected the product being offered, which explains why

MSNBC averaged 1.1 million viewers during the month of October but plummeted to an average audience of 736,000 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week following President-elect Donald Trump’s historic landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. MSNBC’s remarkable 31% drop comes as Fox News Channel’s viewership grew by 61% over the same time period. 

Yesterday’s news holds little appeal for most people–except of course to the overpaid staffers at MSNBC, who see their gravy train’s locomotive heading into the roundhouse for good.

The sad decline of St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan

Paralleling the decline of Episcopal Church.

St Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, where your Tatler was a parishioner long ago, used to be one of the richest parishes in the US. Now it is going broke. Attendance is way down, 36% since 2019, and still declining. Donations are down as well and its once substantial endowment is dwindling away, owing to the church dipping into it to pay the bills.

Hardest hit is the church’s boarding school, which trains boys for its celebrated choir, one that rivals the finest in Britain, including the King’s College Choir, Cambridge. The school is turning over its boarding operations to an outside firm in hopes of freeing up funds. Meanwhile, capital projects are being deferred or cut back, which is the kiss of death for organizations like this unless it can find a way to boost revenues, a difficult task when attendance and donations are in steep decline.

How did this formerly well-to-do institution find itself in the hole? COVID is partly to blame, but attendance did not rise to former levels when the virus had run its course, meaning those absent parishioners are worshipping elsewhere or, a common malaise in the Episcopal Church, staying home Sundays or going to the golf course instead.

This is speculation on Bickerstaff’s part, but the fact is the church, formerly Orthodox Anglican, has gone soft, with its clergy staff including two openly gay priests living together, as well a woman priest who is married to the rector (the church is also over-staffed). As is often said, “go woke, go broke,” a fate that has befallen many formerly rich Anglican parishes both here and abroad.

Veteran reporter of Orthodox Anglican churches David Virtue provides far more details on the miserable state of finances at St Thomas Church.

Thanks to WJT

Rediscovering a recording classic

E. Power Biggs, Gregg Smith Singers, The Edward Tarr Brass, Texas Boys Choir, The Gabrielli Consort La Fenice, Vittorio Negri, Conductor

This remarkable recording was released way back in 1968 and was recorded in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. It was the pet project of E. Power Biggs, who along with producer John McClure, persuaded the powers at Columbia Masterworks to bestow their blessings on the production, despite massive cost overruns and obdurate Venetian bureaucrats who threw up one hurdle after another (Mr McClure referred to them as “the macaroni curtain”), which Messrs Biggs and McClure patiently dealt with as they arose. That was no easy feat in Italy in 1968, but they managed to get the job done and the album was released to great acclaim from musicians, music historians, and critics.

Truly amazing is, the recording has been in the catalogue (now Sony Music’s) for over four decades and never has been dropped. While some of the performance practices of the time may sound a little dated to modern scholars, most listeners will not find them egregiously anachronistic, and the wonderful antiphonal back and forth of choirs and brass, seem to anticipate by decades the “surround sound” recordings of today. They sound, along with their high quality audio, truly marvelous when played on a good modern audio system. 

The recording also helped bring to the world’s attention the sad condition of the San Marco Basilica back then, propelling a successful movement to restore it.

You can find The Glory of Gabrielli on the Qobuz and Spotify streaming services, which sound fine indeed, as well a posting of it on YouTube, which also sounds fine.

Perhaps most important, this recording serves to show not only the glory of Gabrielli, but the glorious legacy of Catholic liturgy and music in general and sadly highlights how far it has descended in our time, to today’s god-awful mediocrities, like “Gather us in,” “I am the Bread of Life” and other atrocities, that far too manyof today’s Catholics consider typical church music.

It isn’t and it’s well worth your time to listen to the Glory of Gabrielli.

How much do they despise America? Read below.

From the journal of the monied radical left, Salon:

American society was founded on white settler colonialism, genocide and slavery. This unresolved birth defect at the foundation of the American democratic experiment meant that the country was racially exclusionary by design, from the founding well into the 20th century [Italics added]. At present, American politics is contoured by asymmetrical political polarization, in which Republicans have moved so far to the right that the party’s most “moderate” members are far more extreme than the most “conservative” Democrats. This makes substantive compromise and bipartisanship in the interests of the common good and the American people almost impossible.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Trump supporters and Trump-loathers, increasingly do not live in the same neighborhoods or communities. In all, they largely do not socialize with each other, or have other forms of meaningful interpersonal relationships in day-to-day life.

. . .

Recent research by Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University, demonstrates that America’s democracy crisis may be even more intractable than the above evidence suggests. In his recent article “Cognitive Sophistication, Religion, and the Trump Vote,” which appeared in the January 2021 edition of Social Science Quarterly, Sherkat examined data from the 2018 General Social Survey and concluded that there are substantial negative differences between the thinking processes and cognition of white Trump voters, as shown in the 2016 presidential election, as compared to other voters who supported Hillary Clinton or another candidate, or who did not vote at all.

Harkening Mengele, with its contrived psychological analyses of those who refuse to buy into the leftist agenda, this is but a small sample of the barely-controlled fury found throughout the post-election edition of wretched, hate-infused Salon.

If you are a glutton for this venom, go to the For What it’s Worth Blog, for far more extensive excerpts.

They don’t scare us anymore.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, soon after Donald Trump’s smashing victory, announced she would continue her efforts to collect the $454 million civil fraud judgment against Trump for allegedly inflating his worth so to receive better terms on a loan he was seeking.

Time was, up to–let’s say around midnight this past Tuesday–most people reacting to a threat from the AG of New York would have their lawyers issue some sort of wimpy– “please don’t hurt me”– response to her threat along the lines of

We are in receipt of your recent demands addressed to our client. Please be advised we will protect our client’s rights to the maximum extent possible against any unjust actions undertaken by your office.

Or similar rubbish.

There has been a sea change. Consider the response of Mike Davis, a possible contender for Attorney General of the United States in the new Trump administration, to James’s threat.

I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term. Listen here, sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time and we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights. I promise you that.

Left-wing thugs can still threaten us as they did in the past, but now they don’t scare us. They are the ones who should be scared. About time.

Mike Davis, possible next Attorney General of the United States, (From the New York Post)