Removing an ant from your ear canal

 The usually wonderful writer Anthony Lane uses a lazy analogy in describing some lyrics from a pop song.

Trying to get them out of your head is like trying to dislodge an ant that has crawled into your ear canal.

Not that hard I would imagine- I would stick my head under a sink.
More importantly an analogy fails when a reader is asked to understand something they know well by comparing it to something they don't know at all. Everyone knows what it is like to have a pop song that won't stay out of their head. Lane asks us to compare that to something very few people have experienced.

Techcrunch's weird analogy

By extracting data from suppliers, Apple’s chip team has a feedback loop into product planning. All of this collective wisdom adds up, helping Apple decide what to roll-up, buy, license, or outsource. Imagine seeing your competition’s entire feature roadmap, and then planning your own SoC [System on a chip] strategy. It’s like seeing your neighbor’s wife naked, and deciding afterward whether you’re interested, even though you’re already married.

 The SoC statement is completely understandable and the logical conclusion of several paragraphs of clear prose. Then a strange analogy about having an affair with a neighbor's wife is introduced. Analogies are good when they clear up complicated situations. They are bad when they make clear situations confusing.
My guess is the author has been thinking a lot about affairs lately.