import MySQLdb
import MySQLdb.cursors

conn = MySQLdb.Connect(
    host='localhost', user='root',
    passwd='', db='test',compress=1,
    cursorclass=MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor) # <- important
cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT name, sometext txt FROM foo")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
cursor.close()
conn.close()

for row in rows:
    print row['name'], row['txt'] # bingo!

# another (even better) way is:

conn = MySQLdb.Connect(
    host='localhost', user='root',
    passwd='', db='test',compress=1)
cursor = conn.cursor(cursorclass=MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor)
# ...
# results by field name
cursor = conn.cursor()
# ...
# ...results by field number