As it stands, this modification should be future-proof (until Django changes the way it handles static files or the default location for admin media). Once we drop support for Django 1.3, we can simply replace the calls to our custom 'admin_media_prefix' tag (from shims) with the 'static' tag from staticfiles and remove the import all together. 

Basically, we need to call:
> {% admin_media_prefix %} 

in Django 1.3; but need to call:

> {% static 'admin' %}

in Django 1.4+.

I can't think of another way to do this that isn't equally (or more) complex. Naturally, I'm open to suggestions.