The National Portrait Gallery's succumbing to pressure to remove a video from an art exhibit is highly disappointing. Worse than disappointing are the politicians and self-appointed censors who are pressing the gallery to dismantle the entire exhibit and are using the controversy to threaten the museum's public funding.

As the latest WikiLeaks revelations have shown, when diplomatic cables are made public they are often far from diplomatic. In fact, they aren't even good journalism.

Soon, after the shock of the WikiLeaks leaks fades away in the media and international concern, and the astonishment wanes, the reality of the evidence and the public documentation of secret diplomacy will remain a meaningful event, at present and in the future.

The first batch of recently released secret and confidencial US State Department documents obtained by Wikileaks include over a dozen dispatches from the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, evidencing espionage against the Chavez administration, use of opposition media and politicians as informants and insulting remarks about the country.

The release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks contains some serious stuff: US diplomats have been trying to steal the credit card numbers of top UN officials, Saudi Arabia is putting pressure on the US to attack Iran, Iran has obtained advanced long-range missiles from North Korea. Other cables are not so earth-shaking, but they nonetheless reveal personalities and events that are comical, surprising, or just plain weird. Here's our top five.

The release of classified U.S. material by Wikileaks has been characterized in a negative light – as an embarrassment to the U.S. administration and a threat to U.S. national security and the international community at large. As former U.S. government officials who worked on North Korea (DPRK) for the National Security Council and for the Office of Korean Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, it is crucial to underscore the impact these leaks have had on efforts to work with other countries to address common problems.

Similarly, forcing the US military and the State Department to become more secretive might well hamper their effectiveness. But it seems most likely to hamper their effectiveness at things like nation-building and community outreach, where you need a broad, decentralized effort.

Among the revelations in the Wikileaks documents is this: Inside many a foreign service officer lurks a frustrated novelist. While most of the State Department cables engage in dry analysis of geopolitical issues, some are polished narrative gems crafted with an ear for dialogue and an eye to catching the attention of bureaucratic higher-ups. At times, it feels like tabloid diplomacy.