Is speaker blown if it is "scratchy" when you push on cone?

Well, in the best case, it's plain old cone rub and that alone makes it a bad speaker.

 

Yep, that's voice coil rub, alright. Felt enough of 'em to know. How were you "breaking in" these speakers?

To clarify my answer, while the speaker now has voice coil rub (and will sound like A$$), it's not technically "blown" which is when it has no ohm reading on a multimeter. But it will eventually blow from the heat caused by the voice coil rub, since the extra heat will overheat the wires running to the coil, and then it will read "O" or "open" (no reading) on a multimeter.

Take it out, get it reconed, or replaced, cuz it's going to sound bad (and get worse) from here on out...sorry!

 

Don't know about the fabric softener, but getting a paper cone wet is a good way to warp it. A warped cone will twist the voice coil around some way, and there you go. Voice coil rub.

I can see, lightly applying something (very evenly) to the surround, but not the whole cone.

 

I think the failure mode caused by voice coil rub is that the coil wire gets rubbed and worn until it breaks, and then you have an open coil.

In any event, I agree the speaker is already "toast"