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The joke measures violence by target, mocking false rebellion and craving a more consequential blow.

Punching Einstein stands for attacking intelligence or genius in a flashy but misplaced way. Wishing the punch had landed on Tim Leary shifts the satire toward counterfeit liberation or fashionable provocation. The humor is dry and aggressive, using a few lines to rank gestures by how much they would actually disturb somebody.

A three-line jab at a friend for hitting the wrong cultural enemy: you should have punched Leary, not Einstein.

The page works as a deflated punchline: it imagines the 'smart' move in a bar fight as picking a better intellectual target, which is itself a small piece of literary criticism about who deserved deflating in that era. The wish is not fulfilled, so the whole page hangs on its conditional 'if only'. That wistfulness keeps it from being pure bravado.