I’ve posted about this issue on two other occasions, and I finally decided to really dive into it and find the true problem.
If you have noticed some video/graphics issues in LinuxMint or another Debian/Ubuntu based distribution along the lines of slanted tooltip fonts, random desktop environment restarts, and strange menu issues in Java apps, you may have the same problem I have been having.
My issues were a lot easier to resolve than I though they were going to be. The problem stems from an older version of the AMD/ATI video drivers that are found in the repos. If you have installed them and see these issues, then I may have the quick and easy solution for you.
This is the post on the LinuxMint forums that helped me considerably:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=96957#p553730