It’s really in to curse right now. Seriously!

I’ve noticed more people using profanity in social situations and cyber space is dripping with naughty language.

I got a tweet on Twitter yesterday about a new site that tracks cursing on Twitter called CurseBird. I’m serious. You can see everyone cursing on Twitter in real time.

Here’s a sampling: (Warning: Prepare for cursing)

Party at the Chemistry Lounge…100st and Liberty Avenue, Queens. Be there or be a fucking asshole!!

— SmartzWorld #1489787895 12 seconds ago

…oh, jesus. The cord just came out of my charger. It’s broken. And I’m on reserve battery power. *cries* oh, shit, shit, SHIT!

— thisisnerolilea #1489794494 just a moment ago

People seem more understanding lately about cussing.

This past weekend, NFL free agent Plaxico Burress unleashed a profanity tirade on a cop.

“F- - - you! You’re going to be in a lot of trouble. I know the sheriff personally,” he reportedly told a deputy sheriff that had stopped him for erratic driving.

This was the New York Post’s lead on the story:

At least this time Plaxico Burress was only shooting from the lip.

I guess it was much better than shooting off a gun, which is what Burress did last year at a nighclub when he accidentally shot himself in the thigh.

There is something freeing about being able to curse like a sailor, but alas, you may regret permanent, public displays of profanity when your career ship comes in.

What do you think happens when a hiring manager types in your name?

What if a hiring manager, or your boss for that matter, types in your name and FUCK or SHIT?

Let’s see what happens with my name:

OMG, the first item on Google is a CareerDiva post where I say, “fucking.”

Yikes. Who knew.

Anyway, you see my point, right?

Being a journalist, I sort of have a bit of leeway when it comes to cursing, especially if I’m using it to make a point. So, when I’m someday knocking on doors to get a job, I may be okay if a “fuck” here or a “shit” there comes up in a story I’ve written.

But you have to figure out if profanity connected to your name will help or hinder your job search, or your present gig.

I’m thinking a teacher or doctor might not benefit from such an association, just to name a few professions.

Now actors, they seem to be okay with a history of cursing.

Remember Christian Bale, who played Batman in the “The Dark Knight”?

I wrote about him a while back in my MSNBC.com column. He cursed out a poor camera man and was caught on tape.

Bale’s career seems to be doing okay. He’s starring in the new Terminator movie and everyone, including my hubby, is dying to see the flick.

Now don’t think I’m a prude. I’m all about free speech and cursing. And frankly I don’t get why people aren’t allowed to curse on network TV but they can show a bunch of pretty unsavory stuff in shows during prime time. I’d rather have my kids hearing cursing than watching killing.

I agree with Dayne Pratt, who wrote an opinion piece for a Northern Arizona University news site called, “Mom should’ve never washed your mouth out with soap”:

In the land of the free, in a building with a wall that depicts the words of the First Amendment to remind us of our rights to express ourselves freely through speech, religion, assembly and the press, shouldn’t we be allowed to say just a couple bad words?

Bad words, curse words, swear words, cuss words — they’re all the same, and they’re all harmless.

Alas, many people don’t see it that way. My dad was one of those people. He never spanked my older sister Vaso because she was the golden, first-born child. But when she dropped a curse word in front of him, whammo. He slapped her across her face. (Me he spanked a lot by the way.)

But I digress.

So, bottom line, cursing may be in vogue right now, but so was this outfit once upon a time:

Do you want people digging this up when you apply for that dream job?

UPDATE BELOW:
Why don’t women stand up when they ask questions at conferences?

This question was asked of me by the one guy who attended my women and leadership talk at the Institute for Career Advancement Needs (ICAN) Women’s Leadership Conference yesterday in Omaha.

More than 200 women came to hear my talk and many asked questions. But no one stood up when I called on them.

Typically, this gentleman pointed out, when he attends conferences that are heavily weighted with men they always stand up to ask questions. So it seemed odd to him that no women did.

So, why do we all think that is?

One woman standing on line to speak with me after the session speculated that women are fearful of calling too much attention to themselves.

There is something to that. Women are definitely more self-conscious. Not all, I know, but most.

I think it’s that self-consciousness that keeps so many women from attaining their dreams. Or at least it’s a contributing factor.

The theme that kept coming up over and over again at the one-day ICAN women’s event was empowerment. I know, people hear that word and think, “here we go. Yet another old and tired buzz word.”

I admit, I’ve thought that way from time to time. But I really did feel the spirit of empowerment yesterday. There was an energy during the sessions and the keynote addresses that was palpable. Women, including myself, were visibly pumped up, as if a coach was yelling at us to do that last sit up.

“Come on.” “You can do it.” “Don’t give up wimp!”

Suze Orman was on hand to yell at us about our finances. And Christiane Northrup, a women’s health advocate, was there to slap our vaginas and attitudes around.

Inspiring words came from one of the few token males at the event, Tim Rouse, who said it was time for women to take over and try to do a better job than the men, who apparently have screwed things up big time.

The theme of my speech was “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office: Valuable Leadership Lessons,” and I basically wanted to share with the crowd how the women leaders I’ve interviewed in my career were able to make it to the top.

Here’s a link to my PowerPoint presentation:

women-leaders-ican-printout.ppt

What did they have in common? I call it the Fantastic Four: Mentors, Positivity, Self-Cheerleading and Work-horsing.

The majority of women leaders I’ve met told me they had mentors they seeked out; they didn’t let discrimination or negativity derail them; they were great, or learned to be great, at tooting their own horns; and they worked like dogs.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Oh, and I also talked about ambition.

You know, that trait women aren’t supposed to have.

What I found most telling was when I asked the audience to raise their hands if they considered themselves ambitious.

I was shocked to see quite a few women did not raise their hands. And those that did, for the most part, did not throw their hands high up in the air. They offered meek, half-raised hands.

I asked one woman why she didn’t raise her hand, and she shrugged her shoulders.

To that I said, “every woman in this room should be ambitious.”

We want to breath don’t we? We want to survive? We want to do what’s best for ourselves, our families, right?

Then we all are ambitious damn it!

My advice: find a leadership conference near you and go. It may inspire you. ICAN inspired me.

UPDATE:

I asked Richard Zeoli, author of the new book “The 7 Principles of Public Speaking” what his take on women not standing up was and here’s his interesting take:

Unfortunately, many companies may not have offered women the kind of communications training they have offered to their male counterparts. That needs to change. And only recently colleges have made pubic speaking courses a requirement, and then only in certain degree areas. Training and study leads to confidence in those sort of situations. As people continue to advance in the marketplace, it would be worth taking the time to learn communications techniques. Even though I remind people that public speaking is no different than having a conversation, we are still predisposed to feel anxiety in these situations especially when we don’t know other people in the room.

The second reason is that often people feel nervous about asking a question because they play a little mind reading game and assume everyone else in the room will think they asked a dumb question. People often sit there and imagine other people laughing at them. That doesn’t really give us the confidence we need in these situations to ask a bold question.

The reality is that most people in the audience are also thinking the same thing, which is why they aren’t asking the question either! The remedy is to remind yourself that these irrational fears never come true. No one is going to laugh at you call you names. Get your mind to a place where you feel comfortable in these situations. I advise my client to close their eyes and visualize asking the question. Take a few deep breaths and remind yourself that asking questions is something you do everyday in life and this is no different. Once you muster up the courage to ask the question, you will feel a real rush knowing you just overcame a fear. The confidence you gain in these situations will help you in other situations where speaking in public may help advance your career. And if you make a mistake, remember that no one cares but you.

A new word for the English lexicon — jindaled.

Basically it’s when a lot is riding on you but instead of hitting it out of the park you are publicly humiliated.

Poor Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

He seems like a nice guy, really, and he had aspirations of someday becoming president.

Unfortunately, he’s got major egg on his face after giving the Republican response to President Obama’s speech to Congress on Tuesday.

If you guys didn’t get to witness his self destruction, his speech was dripping with bad cliches, he was sort of sing songy; and he even evoked the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which, if he didn’t remember, was a debacle for a Republican administration.

Here’s a YouTube video of it:

Even his own Republican supporters have been panning Jindal’s performance.

This from conservative writer David Brooks: “I thought Bobby Jindal gave possibly the worst response to a Democratic speaker in the history of democracy.”

People are even comparing Jindal to that dorky guy from the show “30 Rock” Kenneth the Page.

It seems slightly unfair that one speech can torpedo a person’s career, but sometimes a public embarrassment can do just that, and I’m not talking about just a widespread embarrassment like Jindal’s.

It could happen when you gather a group of colleagues together at your office and try to convey a new project, or initiative and end up falling on your face. You could be giving a speech at an industry event and come off as uninspiring, or worse, dumb. Or it may be your turn on a conference call to update your division on the latest product launch and you end up stuttering your way through.

I have heard stories from employees who say they can link their career demise at a company to one or a series of public embarrassments like the ones I described.

But public humiliation doesn’t always have to be a career killer. Remember Mel Gibson’s drunken display when he yelled at cops and said some pretty nasty things? Didn’t seem to hurt his career. (Well, his movie Apocalypto was pretty crummy.)

So, how can you keep yourself from making a public screw up, and how can you come back from a major reputation pummeling?

“First, go back to your strengths,” says Shawn Driscoll, CEO of Succeed Coaching and Development.

“Where Jindal went wrong is he took on something that wasn’t his natural strength (and is for Obama) a prepared speech without an audience. Jindal is a face to face, informal speaker, much better on the fly than scripted. He put himself in a situation where he was not as strong as the person he was following, Obama.”

Driscoll teaches her clients something she calls the ARC:

Acknowledge and be really authentic. Yep, I know that speech missed the mark; or whatever the embarrassment was.

Reframe it. Basically put it in perspective. “It was one speech. We’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m committed. Here’s how I plan to go about it.”

Choose a different venue/approach going forward. Go back to leading from your own strengths. Do what works well for you. You can quietly work on getting better at the “soft spot” but the truth is, it can be a real waste of energy and effort to put a bunch of time into trying to shore up the weakness or go on the defensive trying to justify what happened. Go back to what you do really well and are known for. Knock it out of the park that way. Play things on YOUR terms.

And Shelley Canter, author of “Make the Right Career Move” says you have two choices after such a blunder:

(1) ignore the public flub but learn from it, prepare well, and dazzle your next audience.

(2) Following the old adage of “the best defense is a good offense”, make a light-hearted acknowledgement of the flub in passing (no long-winded act of contrition), learn from the bad experience, and dazzle your next audience. The strategy is largely the same, the only choice being whether to acknowledge the blunder publicly or not. But the thing that will save a career is owning the mistake (the only way to learn from experience), learning from the experience, and working hard to perform differently and better the next time.

Hopefully there won’t be a next time. Driscoll believes, “People can forgive one misstep. But not two.”

Yikes. That’s a lot of pressure.

I’m willing to give Jindal a second chance. We all should. Remember: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

What do you all think? Did you ever screw up publicly? Did you come back? If so, how did you do it?