ssh -D troubleshooting [solved]

I followed this article, and many others like it, trying to get a local SOCKS proxy set up via ssh. The setup seems to work normally, with no errors; but when I configure my browser to use localhost as a proxy, every page instantly loads as a zero length, blank white page.

I've tried multiple browsers, ports, etc. I'm on a mac running leopard and my linode runs debian lenny. I tried using a different, non-linode remote server and had the same problem, so perhaps the problem is with my ssh client? Any ideas?