Good friends – the following is just what you might suspect what we over 60ers have been thinking. If you fit into our age group you will likely agree wholeheartedly. If not, bear with us as we clear the air for the next generation:

For those of you still listening to radio: do you find today’s professional announcers far less than the professionals they used to be – grating and unpolished, as they (especially those on NPR) say loud and clearly, “tempacher” along with “twunnies,” and going on to fractured words like “yer,” “sher” and “fer,” “kinda,” “wanna” until they appear normal. Are you distracted by their nasal A’s or lost R’s as in “Febyouary” or losing other letters, as in “innernashnal,” “tempacher” or “recognize.”

In fact, it’s become everyday sloppy diction for us all, along with a habitual pattern of fading on sentence ends.

How do you feel about “by theirselves,” (themselves) “there’s cars,” (there are more than one), “for who” (whom), and the oft confusing use of “lie” and “lay”? Have you cringed when hearing “a smile on their face” instead of ‘his’ or ‘her’ faces” or “Between you and I”?

Or “Me and him are going fishing.” Or – well you get the idea. Such errors seem to have slipped by today’s teachers and parents until accepted as normal.

We could continue with examples from professional radio or TV announcers and equally improperly trained teachers and adults, until one wonders how we communicate at all.

Shoddiness seeps into many areas beyond diction. In everyday life.

Do professionals any longer know how to repair or build things properly? Have we relaxed with the times and simply become sloppy about everything we do or say in this overly casual generation – and ignore such results as when recently, a woman on her test plane flight nearly lost her life due to an incorrectly connected wheel on the plane?

Casual? Relaxed? Let’s be honest. Anyone of a certain age, perhaps over 60, can remind us of how teachers once assiduously corrected us in the proper use of spelling, grammar, the three R’s, of social manner – but now use what we call Positive Reinforcement – into a slow slide, from constructive guidance to a sort of errant display of incompetence.

And what about a time when clothing was developed for specific purposes – shirts and ties or dresses for formal occasions, and “relaxed” wear for informal times – not any longer, I fear.

The rule today, as with language and social mores, is the development of a society with no standards – nothing of late is wrong. Forget the usual rules and create your own.

The laxity and results don’t stop there: consider the increase in car, bus, train, plane accidents as growing results? And including the general sloppiness in construction work and repair? Do we shudder at the thought of having a professional, for example, repair your car or plumbing – or simply sigh and accept the increasingly unacceptable results due to carelessness or inattentiveness?

A good example of today’s laxity: NPR hit the airwaves 51 years ago, created by ambitious broadcasters who brought the finest in intelligent radio to audiences wishing for more and more sophisticated material – and held rigidly to its standards to the present, only losing grip on its noble aims, gradually, reluctantly, until it caught up with – what? To begin, a gradual lowering of announcer standards.

Remember Susan Stamberg, Bob Edwards and all the other remarkable voices who brought us consistently intelligent professionalism and knew how to pronounce correctly, especially the name of their home sight – Washington (not Washingtin, as constantly heard today from their headquarters in that very city?

Even locally we hear the towns of Houghton and Hancock mispronounced as Ho-en and Hain’cock.

What about taste? NPR originally brought a broad, intelligent approach to material of interest to well-educated listeners now beyond the current NPR interest to include many things sexual (the more devious the better), and flaunt questionable subject matter as if to say, “Look at us; aren’t we courageous?” And technically, what about the switch from exacting broadcast functions to regular sloppiness with the deadliest of all broadcasting sins – changes in volume and frequent NPR moments of dead air, sometimes long enough to cause the listeners to think their radios had malfunctioned?

And what about NPR’s proud reminder that its airtime is free of commercials, ignoring the fact that now each 60-minutes are filled with as much as cleverly inserted 20 minutes of “non-commercials”? To be fair, these – and more – flaws in broadcasting techniques that now include an overuse of musical backgrounds and pre-planned Q’s-and-A’s – we accept them in exchange for still fine coverage of many important subjects that still exist, like well organized unbiased political coverage and other interesting topics from the past or present to warrant continued listening.) Yes, we still listen because NPR still fills the gaps in commercial radio.

This general sloppiness didn’t suddenly occur. Each generation and its uniqueness reveal an ongoing fact; from Plato’s objection to the generation preceding his, to the present – and will continue into the future, with the next generation’s change – usually from one extreme opposite to the next – to form what we call generation gaps.

If this over-60 generation (of which I’m obviously one) regrets the shoddiness of this generation, it can only hope that a reversal will in the future get us back on track to what we knew as pride in careful attention to more strict correctness. (But don’t hold your breath waiting for it. Each generational change sneaks in slowly, and is reluctant to leave until the next generation…)