Of course it's annoying. Maybe it's my little brain's wanting to trivialize what it can't understand, though probably not, but it seems to me that all politics (and, adding another layer of apparent complexity, the reporting thereon) is little boys in big men's suits playing cloak-and-dagger games with whatever toys are at their disposal. You can trace everything from famine in 13th-century Europe to World War I to Darfur to college-football-alignments back to boys and their toys, and the fears that motivate the need to win. Sometimes the boys are girls, but the boys have bigger toys. I know all this because it was revealed to me in a PHENOMENON-style lightning flash when my 20-month-old son dropped a cast-iron (as it then seemed) Tonka truck onto his baby brother's head, some 30 years ago.... Doesn't make me like men any less. Does make me want to put the Tonka trucks in the attic