“Trying to Listen to Someone Whispering While Others are Shouting in Your Ear”--Use of Visual, Evocative Expression to Emphasize One’s Point

(Rewritten March 8, 2022) 

Here is a recent example of a highly effective communicator using a vivid, evocative expression while emphasizing something and thus making his assertion indelible --an example which, I hope, will inspire the rest of us into similarly imaginative analogies, especially when we are trying to break through the clutter. 

• As many of my readers know, radio astronomy (whose objective is “to unravel the mysteries of the universe,” to quote The Wall Street Journal’s David Winning) involves the use of gargantuan telescopes to pick up infinitesimally faint radio signals coming in from outer space.  Regrettably, the task of radio astronomers is becoming exponentially difficult because these incredibly dim signals are all too often drowned out by the far stronger radio signals emitted by an ever-widening array of “interferers” which range from satellites and cellphone towers to mobile phones and other personal electronic devices.  So, while speaking to the WSJ, Tony Beasley, director of the Charlottesville, Va., based National Radio Astronomy Observatory, used a brilliant analogy to describe a radio astronomer’s increasingly Sisyphean task: “It’s like trying to listen to somebody who is whispering while everyone else is shouting in your ear.”  

© Copyright 2021  V.J. Singal