Dalton Trumbo

Before getting 23 years in prison, Hollywoods disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein pleaded for mercy in a courtroom here, saying "men are losing due process".

Movies based on real people and incidents have always been popular in Hollywood. And if the individual or the event is gripping enough, these films become frontrunners at award ceremonies as well.

American exceptionalism is a Will McAvoy speech wrapped in a Big Mac, and nowhere is this more evident than in the country's take on free speech—a delusion that is bipartisan, irrespective of whether one votes red, blue, or purple. Take a recent New Yorker piece titled The Detention of Mahmoud Khalil Is a Flagrant Assault on Free Speech, which, like all others in the same vein, operates under the assumption that Trump isn’t ceteris paribus but a unique, Agent Smith-like bug in the American simulation.