Perhaps, although calling it an "excuse" is rather offending depending on who the person is and your relationship to them. I think anyone would feel upset if someone they knew of died. Facebook just helps you find out about it sooner rather than twenty years later.

It's okay if the families and friends of murder victims feel murder as a visceral reality in their lives. It's even okay if that completely unbalances their political opinions. If violent crime escalated to the point that such people were anything other than a small minority, drastic measures would be appropriate.

However, people have a tremendous appetite to vicariously live the dramas of others. The more dramatic, the better. The vast majority of the electorate turn on their televisions every day with an appetite, latent or manifest, to become emotionally involved, and television producers strive to feed that appetite. We can't allow that many people the privilege to say "the actual crime rate doesn't matter." They have a civic responsibility to (do their best to) choose appropriate policy approaches to violent crime. If everyone excuses themselves from their civic responsibilities because they were traumatized by CNN's coverage of Natalee Holloway, then our policies will be designed for a nonexistent hyperviolent world.

Obviously people should put their relationships in perspective, but they often prefer not to. If Ryan Seacrest is murdered today, will his millions of Twitter followers take a deep breath and say, "Well, you know, it's not as if he was really my friend." Of course not. People find it deeply satisfying to join in collective grief and outrage. They'll exaggerate their emotional connection for the sake of amplifying the drama. Nobody wants to be left out.

Of course, no one who is really grieving the loss of a close friend would react that way, but when they're outnumbered thousands or millions to one by voyeurs, do their reactions matter anymore?