Why does text copied from Netscape 7.x paste into other programs in a charcoal font?

This is driving me crazy.

On my macintosh, using Netscape 7.0, if I copy text from anywhere in the 
browser - the window, or even the location bar - and paste it into 
another program, the text will display as Charcoal 12 point type, no 
matter what the font face and size settings are on the other software.

Programs I've noticed this with include pasting from Netscape into:

- Tex-Edit
- MS Word
- Eudora 5.2
- Simpletext
- MS Excel

It's of course not very hard to correct the font in the program into 
which I've pasted.  But why should I have to do this?  Netscape 4.x 
didn't have this problem.  And if I use IE for a browser, the copied 
text will often paste using the size/typeface settings that were being 
displayed in the browser.  That's annoying too, but at least I can 
understand why that's happening.

FWIW, my font settings are generally courier or ariel 10-point in the 
applications I've listed above.  Some are different, but none are 
Charcoal.

Help!