Hot Pockets!

Somehow, when I was exploring the college entrance bribing scandal (Affirmative Action for Rich Folks), I missed the bit of news that one of those rich folks caught up in was a Hot Pockets heiress.

This has been breathlessly reported in some quarters as the inventor of Hot Pockets being among  the accused. But that’s not the case.

Michelle Janavs didn’t invent Hot Pockets. Kudos for that goes to Paul Merage (her father) and David Merage (her uncle), who developed the concept in the early 1980’s and sold the business to Nestle in 2002 for over $2 biillion. But Hot Pockets is the ur-source of the fortune that meant that Janavs had the dough (hah!) to try to bribe her kids’ way into college.

According to the federal complaint, Janavs paid $100,000 for Singer to help a daughter cheat on her ACT in 2017 and get into USC as a purported beach volleyball player. Earlier this year, prosecutors allege, she paid $50,000 for another daughter to cheat on the exam. (Source: LA Times)

One might think that someone associated with the invention of Hot Pockets would want to maintain a low life profile, in general. I mean, would you want to be associated with Hot Pockets?

It’s not like some inventions that, while a bit quirky, aren’t outright bad for you. I seem to recall my husband mentioning that he went to school with someone whose family fortune was based on the traffic cone. Jim also had a classmate at some point along the line who descended from someone who made a ton on those dry cleaner wire hangers with the cardboard hanger thingy on them.

And if I’m not imagining it, my sister Trish knew someone whose family developed the technology behind stone-washed jeans.

But if you’re looking for proof that Balzac was at least partially correct when he wrote that “behind every great fortune there’s a crime”, look no further than the crime against good taste that is the Hot Pocket.

I mean, I like grease, sodium, molten cheese, convenience and fake food as much as anyone, but even I draw the line at Hot Pocket. Seriously, I tried one more than 30 years ago, and the roof of my mouth is still scabbed over and I have residual sodium poisoning on the tip of my tongue.

But I guess when you think of it, Hot Pockets being involved in the college admissions scandal does make some sort of sense.

Hot Pockets is for those looking for a shortcut, the easy way out. Why throw together a meal when you can pop a Hot Pocket or two in the microwave?

Most folks caught with a freezer-full of Hot Pocket would be coming up with excuses and/or be ashamed. So it is, presumably, with those who photoshopped their kids’ heads onto the bodies of water polo players, or had someone correct their kids’ SATs for them. Surely, they’re making excuses – it’s all a game; everyone looks for an edge – and, perhaps, when they’re not being protected by those pricey lawyers running interference for them, in and out of the courthouse, they’re feeling a tiny smidge of remorse, of out and out shame.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that someone caught with a freezer-full of Hot Pockets would turn on the person who discovered this crime against culinary decency and go ballistic, as I’m sure some of the admissions scandal parents have done: they’re pissed at that guy Singer who engineered the whole debacle; pissed at the press…

As for the kids involved, just think about it.

Sure, at least some of them knew what was going on. Don’t you have to sign something on the Common App that says you did it all by your lonesome? Or something along those lines. But these are kids who’ve been fed a steady diet of privilege and corner cutting their entire lives. Only now they’re finding out that, just like Hot Pockets, lying and cheating are bad for you.