One of the weirdest things about the already-weird Deflategate court hearing was how a seemingly-unflattering courtroom sketch of Tom Brady inspired a zillion internet memes Wednesday. Jane Rosenberg, the courtroom sketch artist in question, has been doing this work for 35 years and has covered countless celebrities during that time, but hadn’t previously encountered anything like the backlash she got from Patriots’ fans. As she told The Dan Patrick Show Thursday, they’ve flooded her inbox with nasty e-mails:

“Oh, lots of them. I don’t do social media, I don’t do Twitter or Facebook, so there must be millions more, but people found me on my personal e-mail and just started writing me nasty comments. It’s shocking that people would waste their time to do this. Why bother? What’s the point for people to write these things? But I did get a lot of support, too; that was very nice.”

Here’s the clip of the full interview:

Rosenberg did four sketches over the course of the day, and she told Patrick (2:30) that she typically chooses one defining feature and focuses on it to get sketches done quickly, which doesn’t always make them flattering.

“Courtroom sketching, I tend to just grab onto something to make a likeness quick,” she said. “I’m not really flattering people in general. I mean, he’s a very handsome guy, I didn’t mean to offend him or his fans. I’m getting a gazillion nasty e-mails from his fans. Apparently everyone loves him and I didn’t make him look pretty enough. He is a good-looking guy. If I didn’t make him look good enough, I apologize. I did the best I could under the short time I had. I have to meet deadlines, and I ran right out with my sketch; I don’t fix them up after I do them. They’re done, I run outside the court and they send them in immediately.”

If Helen of Troy had the face that launched a thousand ships, Jane Rosenberg apparently had the modern-day equivalent, the sketch that launched a gazillion nasty e-mails. 2015 is odd sometimes.

[DanPatrick.com]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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