How to generically transform a list?

[Marco Aschwanden]

Suppose you have a list of lists:

theList = [['a',1,11,'aa'], ['b',2,22,'bb'],['c',3,33,'cc']]

I would like to have a GENERIC way how to turn this list of list into 
another list of list.
- A user can choose which columns she wants
- A user can select the order of the columns

For example:
The user wants columns: 1,2
The user wants it to be ordered: 2,1

A non generic approach would maybe do the following:

>>> theList = [['a',1,11,'aa'], ['b',2,22,'bb'],['c',3,33,'cc']]
>>> new_list = [[row[2], row[1]] for row in theList]
>>> new_list
[[11, 1], [22, 2], [33, 3]]

I am sure there must be a rather elegant generic approach, which is 
lurking somewhere to be realeased.

Thanks for any hint in advance,
Marco