title: How to change the background color of a gtk.MenuItem()
body: <p>For a pop-up menu made in Gtk, I would like to have the first menu item as a header. Preferably its background should be white. Since---<a href="http://developer.gnome.org/gtk-faq/stable/x810.html" rel="nofollow">according to the documentation</a>---one cannot change a <code>gtk.Label</code>'s background colour, but rather must change its container's background, it seemed to me the <code>gtk.MenuItem</code> itself should be modified.</p>
  
  <p>However, I have tried the following in vain:</p>
  
  <pre><code>menu_item.modify_bg(gtk.STATE_NORMAL, gtk.gdk.color_parse('#FFFFFF'))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This would work for a container as <code>gtk.EventBox</code>, but for <code>gtk.MenuItem</code> it does not. What's not working here above and what can I do to have this <code>gtk.MenuItem</code> background white?</p>
  
  <p><em>PS: i'd rather not use any .rc file for this.</em></p>