R.S.V.P.U.

They couldn't fit more people at the table, anyway.

Boston mayor Michelle Wu caught a lot of flack recently for withdrawing the evites to white City Hall officials to her "Electeds of Color" party. Sorry folks, it was all a misunderstanding! Carry on.

Some folks condemned Wu for being racist. My take is that if she doesn't know how to send a simple email, she's too incompetent to be the mayor of a major city. 

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a withdrawn invite? I have. The first time was during my senior year in high school. A friend of mine -- let's call him Joe -- asked if I wanted to go with him to a New Year's Eve party. Not used to getting invitations of any kind other than to get lost, I happily accepted. 

On the evening of the party, I swung by Joe's house to pick him up. With genuine embarrassment, he relayed a conversation he had just engaged in with another party invitee, who said the host didn't want me to attend. Not being a popular kid, I told him I understood. And I actually did understand. Like the man says, Way it goes. 

Many years later when I was freelancing TV promo scripts, someone from Fox Television asked me to create a comedy skit for the studio's annual upfront -- the time when networks entice sponsors into shelling out good money to advertise on series that will likely get cancelled by the end of the first season.

I met with some Fox reps at their Midtown hotel, where we hashed out the concept. A day or two later, I turned in my script, which they thought was pretty funny. After the upfront, they invited me to a party being thrown at a West Side bar. While I knocked back a beer, one of the Fox reps gave me an invitation to a swanky after-party later that evening -- then withdrew it so quickly it fell to the floor. As I picked it up, she mumbled, "This isn't for you," and literally grabbed it back.

Word.

As a friend said when I related this story to him, "That was pretty honest for a show business interaction." At least I got $2,000 and a swag bag out of the job.

I share these two stories not for sympathy, but to explain that while I was disappointed, I wasn't insulted. Unlike Mayor Wu's party, there was nothing racial about these incidents. I just wasn't cool enough. 

Whether the mayor's party was technically illegal, I leave the experts to decide. But it is funny that after how people were beaten and killed in the Civil Rights movement, their descendants like the idea of segregation sometimes. Way it goes.

Funny PS: A couple of days after the high school New Year's Eve party, my friend Joe sheepishly sidled up to me. He told the host he had wanted to bring me along but was told that I wasn't allowed.

 "What are you talking about?" the host replied, "Kevin could've come!" Turns out it was the other guy Joe talked to who didn't want me there. Way it went.

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