While using MySQL Workbench’s SQL Editor, it would only display “fetching…” for the Database Tables, Views, and Routines on one specific server. After doing a search, I discovered others reported this “bug”. It turns out it is due to a incorrectly upgraded MySQL server (d’oh).

The Fix:
From the linux Shell:

$ mysql_upgrade -u<username> -p

Where username is your administrative username. The “p” argument tells it you will be supplying a password. You could supply the password on the command line, but I prefer the masked prompt it displays when not done from the command line.

Basically I think this was a problem with the privilege tables after upgrading.