Did you set the "ressed" background-color? It sounds to me like only the pressed color is being set (perhaps a bug in Maemo's QT implementation?). I wonder if setting both the regular and the pressed would fix it.
Also, I think you mentioned earlier that you added 4 menu's, but in some of your testing only 2 showed? Just letting you know on my N900 only Station/Create and Station/Delete show. There are no options for things like username.