This happens for me too on Scientific Linux 5.5, with both the current
emacs-23 branch and trunk. An image of

emacs-23.2 -Q -fn '-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'

is attached. The frame is also very wide.

In GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.10.4)
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.70101000