While calling her words “offensive,” Barack Obama today offered more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger commentary on the retirement of Helen Thomas:

The comments were offensive. It’s a shame because Helen was somebody who had been a correspondent through I don’t know how many presidents, was a real institution in Washington. But I think she made the right decision. I think that those comments were out of line, and hopefully she recognizes that.

She was indeed a “real institution” in Washington. But given her decades-long vitriol toward Jews and Israel, not to mention the genuinely deep unpleasantness with which she conducted herself, such a thing says more about Washington and its press corps, and what is tolerable to both than it does about Helen Thomas, who is and has always been a particularly repellent example of her city’s and her profession’s self-regard. And what these words say about Barack Obama himself I leave to you to decide.