Tom {T'i qifsha trut?} Friedman, "Fuck You"

Thomas Friedman (see preceding post for new editorial policy regarding certain proper names) regarding how it came to pass that he chose to say "Fuck you" to a roomful of people (at the Freedom to Connect Conference) trying to understand journalism:

"I believe passionately in the New York Times, a place I have worked at my whole adult life. Lord knows, it has made its mistakes. Which newspaper or blogger hasn't? But I believe that when it is at its best it plays a vitally important role in our democracy, and flippant, denigrating remarks about it, at a time when it is in economic peril and our country desperately needs serious journalism to sort through this crisis, struck me as deeply unserious. That said, when I'm trying to make a point, especially a heartfelt one, and my choice of words ends up getting in the way of that point — even if for just one person — then I chose the wrong words."

(From David Weinbergers's most recent edition of JOHO, which has much more of interest about new notions of news).

This is Dan {viech d'ase} Ratherism, only rather worse. Mr. {Bousse to la gueule}Friedman has chosen high seriousness and the priestly essence of Journalism to believe in, at a time when what one might wish to do is to look very honestly and dispassionately at the New York {Moor Kwas} Times, the falling industry it clings to, the social crises making it a reasonable question whether, given the current state of social rationality, journalism continues to be what it originally was, or whether it has degenerated, genealogically, into the opposite of its original idea,

social rationality appears to produce normative ideals, however these normative ideals are subject to historical change. Their existence in the present may have little relation to their genesis. That is, what was once normative may have over time come to be instruments of domination. (We can think of a totally administered society or the irrational consequences of rationalization.) Thus, previously normative ideals could lose "the normative kernel" over time. link

and, if so, why.