code: def strip_outer_tag(text):
      
      if not text or not isinstance(text, basestring):
          return text
      stripped = text.strip()
      if (stripped.startswith('<p>') or stripped.startswith('<div>')) and \
          (stripped.endswith('</p>') or stripped.endswith('</div>')):
          return stripped[stripped.index('>')+1:stripped.rindex('<')]
      return text
docs: Strips the outer tag, if text starts with a tag.  Not entity aware;
      designed to quickly strip outer tags from lxml cleaner output.  Only
      checks for <p> and <div> outer tags.