Why had emacs 23 become so ugly?

[Hendrik Boom <hendrik@topoi.pooq.com>]

I'm still running squeeze.  For some reason, when I run emacs now, it 
dieplays all my C and C++ files with a variable-width font, in which the 
indentations I've been using have become microscopic.  What's more, 
carefully counted-out ASCII tables and diagrams have become unreadable.

Why is this?  Why has this nonsense been inflicted on programmers?  What 
can I do about it?  Why should it even be necessary to do anything, 
considering that emacs is presumably maintained by programmers?

-- hendrik