[jquery] jQuery exclude elements with certain class in selector

I want to setup a click event trigger in jQuery for certain anchor tags.

I want to open certain links in a new tab while ignoring ones with a certain class (before you ask I cannot put classes on the links I am trying to catch as they come from a CMS).

I want to exclude links with class "button" OR "generic_link"

I have tried:

$(".content_box a[class!=button]").click(function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();     
    window.open($(this).attr('href'));
});

But that doesn't seem to work, also how do I do an OR statement to include "generic_link" in the exclusion?

To add some info that helped me today, a jQuery object/this can also be passed in to the .not() selector.

$(document).ready(function(){_x000D_
    $(".navitem").click(function(){_x000D_
        $(".navitem").removeClass("active");_x000D_
        $(".navitem").not($(this)).addClass("active");_x000D_
    });_x000D_
});

.navitem_x000D_
{_x000D_
    width: 100px;_x000D_
    background: red;_x000D_
    color: white;_x000D_
    display: inline-block;_x000D_
    position: relative;_x000D_
    text-align: center;_x000D_
}_x000D_
.navitem.active_x000D_
{_x000D_
    background:green;_x000D_
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>_x000D_
_x000D_
<div class="navitem">Home</div>_x000D_
<div class="navitem">About</div>_x000D_
<div class="navitem">Pricing</div>

The above example can be simplified, but wanted to show the usage of this in the not() selector.

use this..

$(".content_box a:not('.button')")