selector logic - ":not(.stars) a"

selector logic - ":not(.stars) a"

Hi, I'm trying to attach a colorbox to all the links on a page except ones within a div having the class 'stars'. Shouldn't I be able to do this using  jQuery(":not(.stars) a")? This seems to completely fail to exclude the stars (which happens also with div:not(.stars) and other classes), it's just as if the :not clause wasn't there at all.

Am I doing something obviously wrong here?