For some reason this was not good enough for the python 3 folks - they actively broke this code which was from folks who had SPECIFICALLy addressed unicode in their apps.

And yes, they could have supported u"" (and a number of other things).

They went - unicode is so critical we will break the world, and then for folks who had already supported unicode well or wanted to dual target a library they said your u"" approach to unicode is so bad we will break it.

Total BS in my book.