Ann Romney wore a $990 blouse: So what?

Ann Romney wore a $990 blouse on a morning TV show Tuesday and the media want to make sure you know about it, because oh no, she didn’t.

Does the blouse prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Romneys are out of touch with the people?

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Mitt Romney’s wife Ann tells the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts about the presumptive GOP nominee’s “wild and crazy” side, and what she calls the “narrative.”

Or does the blouse merely prove that Ann Romney is — like many other wives in politics — a presentable, upper-class woman who purchased it because she liked it and could afford it, and that we should focus instead on matters that truly affect the United States of America?

Questions without answers! Campaign 2012. E pluribus unum. Onward, ever upward. #YOLO.

The blouse on trial is a short-sleeve swath of colorful silk. It is called “The Reed Audubon Silk Shirt.” A yellow-hued falcon (a gyrfalcon, to be exact) swoops across the front; its prey appears to be Ann Romney’s right tricep. The blouse looks like something a well-to-do woman might wear to a cocktail reception in a tea-candled grotto after a full day of birding in western Massachusetts. It was designed by Reed Krakoff, the man who turned Coach into a $4 billion purse enterprise and whose “most abiding aesthetic interest is the use of design to convey privilege,” according to a 5,500-word profile of him in the New Yorker last year.

Krakoff “100 percent didn’t send” the item to Ann Romney, a representative for the designer told ABC News. “We don’t get involved politically.”

Which means Ann Romney or a Romney associate bought it off the rack at either Krakoff’s Madison Avenue boutique or another high-end retailer that sells the top alongside other $1,000 tops, because that’s how much some people spend on tops. Which is not, at this point in American history, a crime.

But in American politics, a $1,000 blouse is at least a misdemeanor. It is also grist for the 24-hour news cycle, which turns men into madmen and joy into sorrow. The Cut, a blog for New York magazine, first noticed the Krakoff within hours of the Romneys’ appearance on “CBS This Morning.” On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell devoted several minutes of airtime to the blouse, which he called “a really ugly T-shirt” that is “yet another example of how out of touch the Romney family can be with how 99 percent of Americans live.”

Despite her penchant for horse ballet, Ann Romney has been cast in the political narrative as the down-to-earth spouse. Her struggles with multiple sclerosis, identity as a stay-at-home mom and ease on the campaign stage have made her an asset to her husband. But the pricey blouse is catnip for critics, who’ve framed Mitt Romney as a rich guy whose beach-house renovation includes an elevator for his cars.

“To some extent, [the blouse] is relevant because it’s one more example of how wealthy she is,” says Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University. “Class always matters a lot, but it matters especially when one candidate is seen as out of touch in economically vulnerable times.”

It was Michelle Obama who nudged the designer into the spotlight last spring, when she wore his items on multiple occasions. In March 2011, she carried a teal leather tote by Krakoff to a parent-teacher conference, according to the Daily Mail.