Patch# 1258 by Christian Heimes: kill basestring.
I like this because it makes the code shorter! :-)
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_collections.py b/Lib/test/test_collections.py
index 24266ed..568e682 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_collections.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_collections.py
@@ -235,7 +235,7 @@
         for sample in [tuple, list, bytes, str]:
             self.failUnless(isinstance(sample(), Sequence))
             self.failUnless(issubclass(sample, Sequence))
-        self.failUnless(issubclass(basestring, Sequence))
+        self.failUnless(issubclass(str, Sequence))
 
     def test_MutableSequence(self):
         for sample in [tuple, str]:
@@ -244,7 +244,7 @@
         for sample in [list, bytes]:
             self.failUnless(isinstance(sample(), MutableSequence))
             self.failUnless(issubclass(sample, MutableSequence))
-        self.failIf(issubclass(basestring, MutableSequence))
+        self.failIf(issubclass(str, MutableSequence))
 
 
 def test_main(verbose=None):