That would not make it simpler.  In fact it would make the test code more complex.  I'd still need the safeSetUpClass dodge (or repeat the try/except/log in every setUpClass method), and I'd have to have a wrapper function that I passed each cleanup to as an argument to wrap it in a try/except/log, since close would just propagate the exceptions.  

I think implementing this parallel to addCleanUp is much cleaner, even if the feature isn't (yet :) in the stdlib.