MAHER, CATHOLIC LEAGUE GO ANOTHER ROUND

The Catholic League responded yesterday to Bill Maher’s public apology after he called Pope Benedict XVI a Nazi on his HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher.” Mr. Maher acknowledged that Joseph Ratzinger was forced to join a German youth organization as a boy, but he added that if a CEO were in charge of an institution that housed molesters, he would be fired.

That did not win any favors with the Catholic League, whose president, William A. Donohue, had this to say in a written statement:

“We accept Maher’s apology for accusing the pope of being a Nazi. Too bad he didn’t stop there. For him to suggest that Pope Benedict XVI was in charge of policing molesters, and failed in doing so, is patently absurd. … It wasn’t until after the scandal hit the newspapers in 2002 that [then-Cardinal Ratzinger] was put in charge of dealing with predatory priests, and by all accounts did so effectively. Maher has to understand that no one person, including the pope, could possibly be held accountable for the behavior of its employees in a global institution.”

Staff Reporter of the Sun

BANKSY ASSOCIATE CASHES IN

Nick Walker, an old spraymate of fellow British street artist Banksy, sold $1.5 million of paintings and prints last week at the start of his first one-man exhibit in the U.K., the gallery that showed them said.

All but two of 60 original Walker works on offer, many featuring his anarchical alter ego, “The Bowler-Hatted Vandal,” found buyers within hours at the Black Rat Gallery in Shoreditch, east London, the gallery director, Mike Snelle, said in an interview. Prices at the exhibition, which started with a private viewing on Thursday, ranged between $4,000 and $70,000.

Mr. Walker, 39, said demand for his work had gone “pretty crazy” after Bonhams’s Urban Art auction in London in February. At that sale, his 2006 spraypaint-on-canvas “Moona Lisa,” showing La Giaconda exposing her bottom, sold for a record $108,000 with fees, more than 10 times the upper estimate.

Bloomberg News

RUSSIAN ART SALE A SUCCESS FOR CHRISTIE’S

Friday’s Russian art sale at Christie’s exceeded even the auction house’s rosy pre-sale estimates, with sales totaling more than $17.5 million — though the work expected to fetch the highest price, “Loge de Théâtre à Pékin,” a painting by Alexander Yakovlev, failed to sell.

The top lot in the New York auction, which featured a large silver and guilloché enamel photograph frame by Fabergé and a pair of silver five-light candelabra by Nicholls & Plincke from the estate of Leona Helmsley, was “The Forest Clearing,” an 1896 landscape painting by Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, which went for $3.18 million. The work had been given an estimate of $1 million to $1.4 million.

A collection of works by Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich from the Rose Art Museum sold well above the pre-sale estimates, totaling $2,023,650. Of 294 lots, 253 were sold in the highly anticipated auction, which Christie’s hoped would capitalize on booming interest in Russian art among the country’s growing upper classes. Russian sales conducted by Christie’s in London last November generated more than $86 million in sales.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

IZZARD EYES POLITICS

British comedian Eddie Izzard, whose acting career is taking off, is eyeing yet another possible career: politician.

Mr. Izzard, who plays Wayne Morrow in FX’s “The Riches” and who just finished shooting “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise, told Newsweek he sees himself getting into European politics at some point.

“We’ve got to make it work in Europe,” the cross-dressing comedian, 46, told the magazine for its issue hitting newsstands Monday. “People are very worried about sovereignty and the loss of sovereignty. I think the stakes are if we don’t make the European Union work, then the world is screwed. End of story.”

Mr. Izzard, who’s lending his voice to the upcoming film “Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” said he enjoyed working on “Valkyrie.” The film stars Mr. Cruise as Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, the aristocratic army officer executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.

Mr. Izzard’s standup comedy act, “Stripped,” is set to begin April 28 in Boston.

Associated Press