Overbearing undownloaded face

[Harry Putnam <hgp@sbcglobal.net>]

I've recently come back to using the agent after several mnths of
running plugged only.  The current setup with undownloaded face seems
to overpower other long standing faces and options.

When messages come in, they seem to receive a dull grey face
(normal-undownloaded) and unless one actuall downloads the message it
is not possible to change that face with other actions that normally
would change a message face.  Things like ticked, domant, read etc
have no effect on this overpowering face.

That might make some sense if the user had true predicate in all
groups and never needed to keep track of undownloaded but read or
ticked but undownloaded or any number of other possibilities, one
might encounter while online.

I haven't noticed any complaints about this so am wondering if it
might be some screw up in my local settings.

Just at a quick thought, it seems the undownloaded face is more a
pain in the butt than a help.

Is it a local problem or is it intended to work this way?  If the
latter how would I override or disable this behavior?