Why Is My Selected Text In Boldface??

[brascoball]

all of a sudden today (it may have been after i installed some HP scanner stuff), my selected text is bold to the point of being almost unreadable in apps like finder and adium, but not in others (i.e. firefox, mail, MacMAME).

For instance, when i click on "Documents" in finder, it turns purple (like it should), and the text "Documents" goes from regular typeface to white (as normal) but also to bold to a point of being almost unreadable. Or, in finder when i go to "View" in the menu, and then to "as Icons" and then "as List", each time something is mouse overed, it becomes blue (as normal), and the text becomes white (as normal), but boldface.

I tried fooling around with the font smoothing style, but none of them fix the problem (although the "turn off" did make the text thin like courier new, but that looks worse). Any suggestions?