Flex ASCII

[Matthew Weir]

Hi,
I'm just wondering if any of you have some insight into how the mx:Label 
interprets ASCII.  Any thoughts on how to change the text of the ASCII 
post-creation?
This works just:
<mx:Label id="TotalLbl" text="&#8598;"/>

However, if I do any of these, it doesn't
var charctr:String = '&#8598;'TotalLbl.text = charctr;
[Bindable] private var charctr:String = '&#8598;'
<mx:Label id="TotalLbl" text="{charctr}"/>

same if I have:
charctr:String = '&amp;#8598;'charctr:String = "&#8598;"
charctr:String = "&amp;#8598;"


Thanks,
Matthew