Update 3/22/13: Carly "Crunk Bear" McKinney is no longer employed.
The Twitter hash tag #freecrunkbear isn't trending yet, not nationally and not even locally, but keep an eye out. Something tells us it will be at some point, if not today, definitely by the end of the weekend after Winter on the Rocks, it might be. Why, you ask? Well, mostly because the plight of Carly Crunk Bear (er, @Crunk_Bear, rather) has been taken up by one Mr. Thomas Pentz, whom you probably know better as Diplo, the illustrious founder of Mad Decent, due of course tomorrow night at Icelantic's Winter on the Rocks. Diplo is attempting to rally his eight hundred and some thousand Twitter followers to tweet with the #freecrunkbear hashtag, mostly as a middle finger to Middle America, we assume.
See also: - Carly McKinney, aka CarlyCrunkBear: Overland teacher outed for hot Twitter photos - Extended Q&A with Diplo - Friday: Icelantic's Winter on the Rocks 2013, 2/1/13
Carly Crunk Bear, as you probably know, is Carly McKinney, the 23-year-old, first year math teacher, who is currently on suspension from her job at Overland High School in Aurora. McKinney has reportedly been temporarily relieved of her duties molding the minds of young people over some controversial tweets she supposedly fired off with the now defunct twitter handle @Crunk_Bear in which she's accused of posting some racy photos, having referred to one student that had been flirting with her as "jail bait" and joked about weed, specifically copping to having weed on campus in her car. The whole thing is rather salacious. You can read all about it on our news blog.
So what does all of this have to do with Diplo? Glad you asked. While you would think that since he did some teaching himself back in Philadelphia that it's merely a solidarity thing amongst young educators, his association is evidently more direct than that. Apparently the Mad Decent maestro retweeted a pic that McKinney had allegedly posted showing herself topless with her back to the camera doing a handstand (below left) -- a nod to Diplo's "Express Yourself" video.
What happens from here is anyone's guess: Will Diplo succeed in getting #freecrunkbear to trend, and if so, will ever Crunk Bear ever be truly free? Will Carly McKinney -- who has supposedly resurfaced on Twitter with the new handle of @carlycrunkbear -- continue expressing herself? Will she be getting crunk with Diplo at Winter on the Rocks and then later at his afterparty at the Gothic Theatre? Ah, yes, so many questions, so little time. The saga continues. Stay tuned.
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