Well I'm an idiot - the fulltext index on page_text was missing from a default installation. It didn't break searches but probably slowed them down tremendously. Also set engine to MyISAM on page_text to avoid cryptic error messages from MySQL.

     1

.mceItemFlash {

     2

	border: 1px dotted #cc0000;

     3

	background-image: url('../images/flash.gif');

     4

	background-position: center;

     5

	background-repeat: no-repeat;

     6

	background-color: #ffffcc;

     7

}