Fedora Core 3: File mode specification error

I just installed Fedora Core 3 (and ran "yum update") and the latest
auctex rpm for fedora (auctex-emacs-11.54-2.fedora.noarch.rpm) from
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/auctex/.  It appears that the rpm puts a
file (auctex-init.el) in /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d which
is loaded by site-start.el and contains the requisite "(require
'tex-site)", but auctex is not working for me on what is practically a
virgin FC3/emacs/auctex install with no .emacs file.

When I try to load a (la)tex file (new or existing), I get the
following error message:

(New file)
Loading tex...
Loading advice...done
Loading tex...done
Loading latex...done
Loading font-latex...done
File mode specification error: (error "Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size")

and the resulting buffer is in "Fundamental" mode rather than tex or
latex.

If the tex file already exists, I get two error messages:

File mode specification error: (error "Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size")
File local-variables error: (error "Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size")

FWIW, max-specpdl-size seems to start out at 700 when emacs is first
started, and it goes up when I try to load a latex file.  If I
increase max-specpdl-size to something like 10000 and try again, I get

File mode specification error: (error "Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size")
(New file)
File mode specification error: (error "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth")

but then the next time I try to load a file, it's back to the
"Variable binding depth" error.  I've also included a backtrace below
from trying "M-x latex-mode" to try to force auctex to fire up.

Any ideas?  I'm stumped.

---
Brett Presnell
Department of Statistics
University of Florida
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~presnell/

"We don't think that the popularity of an error makes it the truth."
   -- Richard Stallman

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Backtrace:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size")
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil t t)
  regexp-opt-group(nil nil)
  regexp-opt(nil)
  font-latex-set-syntactic-keywords()
  font-latex-setup()
  VirTeX-common-initialization()
  LaTeX-common-initialization()
  latex-mode()
* call-interactively(latex-mode)
  execute-extended-command(nil)
  call-interactively(execute-extended-command)