This year, if it hasn't involved tongues, twerks and a confused notion of female empowerment, it hasn't cut the award-show mustard.
Adele's triumph is especially sweet because it hasn't involved any of the cartoonish or kittenish provocations that power so many other female pop stars' careers.
And if you're really unfortunate, there may even be something splattered on the ceiling from a manly competition to see who could throw highest (let's just hope for your man's sake that it hasn't involved your cooking).
The difficulties of exchanging places as each watch ended would, Shackleton wrote, "have had its humorous side if it had not involved us in so many aches and pains".
That is, if it had not involved Blackwater, one of the most prominent, and by some accounts the most aggressive, of the private military companies in Iraq.The incident has provoked an extraordinary row between America and the Iraqi government over who really runs the country.
"It wouldn't have been so bad, if it hadn't involved drowning," he says.
She gets some of the most crucial material, including revelations about the death of the sisters' mother (if it hadn't involved a cat, it "wouldn't have gotten all that national coverage," Babe notes), and she makes the most of it.
But as he put it, the program has not involved "just sitting in a room full of policy geeks".
But on Thursday, a county judge in Atlanta said the decision violated the conference's constitution because it was made by telephone and had not involved all 44 board members.
