I ran into a bunch of extra work fixing and destroying an animation till I figured out what was happening.
When I select an object from the Dope Sheet it does not actually select it as far as the Material & Texture Tabs care.
The Outliner and 3D Viewport show that the object gets selected. but the Material & Texture tabs still displays the previous object’s materials. I kept making changes only to find that I was actually changing the object I previously had selected and not current one I just selected. It only changes to the correct material if I select the object in the outliner or 3D Viewport. I was about to bang my head on the desk before realizing what was going on.
I’m calling it bug because it is very odd, causes confusion and does not make any sense to me that it would be this way on purpose.