Simple unicode-safe version of str(exception)?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>> I have code like this:
>> except Exception, e:
>>    self.setState(self.Failed, str(e))
>> which fails if the exception contains a unicode argument.
> 
> Fails how?

ASCII encoding error, I suppose. It fails only if a) one argument
is a Unicode object, and b) that Unicode object contains non-ASCII
parameters.

>> I did, of course, try unicode(e) but that fails.
> 
> Converting unicode to unicode doesn't help.

e is an exception object, not a Unicode object.

Regards,
Martin