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Classes that extend the builtin 'str' cannot be printed as is, and are automatically converted to string.
#!/bin/env python
class newstring(str):
 def __str__(self):
 return self
a = newstring("hello world")
print a
Running this returns:
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "./test.py", line 7, in <module>
 print a
RuntimeError: print recursion
Given that instances of 'str' are immutable, I see no reason why this should not work.

Python 3.4.0a0 (default:8f048c8c855e, Oct 8 2012, 13:46:48) 
[GCC 4.5.4] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> class newstring(str):
... def __str__(self):
... return self
... 
>>> type(str(newstring()))
<class '__main__.newstring'>

And indeed
>>> print(a)
hello world

Radu Dan: Printing of str-derived classes works in Python >=3.0, so you should just upgrade to newer version of Python. New features will not be backported to Python 2.