There is one font I need to use for work. And it appears skewed in final cut, but looks fine in all other programs (after effects, photoshop, etc...) I can tell it is skewed and not italic because even the cursor line is skewed! The cursor does not skew when you select italic, just the letters. I have tested with all other fonts, they do not skew nor does the cursor.
After this glitch other things started happening. I could no longer see my video it just appeared black and wierd stuff like that. I trashed preferences, and FCP works normally again accept this font, which makes final cut go crazy!

I have to use this font "whitney" and I have to use it in final cut 5.0.4 on my powerbook (15inch 2g sdram).

any ideas?

FCP and large fontfamilies together give trouble. There's a workarround. Go to Typecatalog (or is it called Fontcatalog on English systems?) and disable all family members of the Whitney font, exept the one (or two) you want to use. FCP will be happily after.