Who can take a joke?

Two friends decide to go hang gliding off of a steep hill at the end of summer. Their kite-device does not stay aloft and lands of the edge of a very steep cliff. One friend rescues the other from certain death.
On the way back up the hill on friend decides they should pick a leader. The other friend agrees and says the leader should be the cleverest one, hinting that this would not be the one that crashed the kite. The other friend agrees and says that the cleverest one would also be the one who could take a joke and something else very clever and wouldn't the first friend have gotten that joke if he were the cleverest one?
This joke is accompanied by the image of five or six very large-scale AA batteries surrounding a four-legged animal representing the first friend, probably an ass, with two on each side, positive end up, and the last battery coming up to the shocked animal and tapping it gently on the nose with its positive end. The ass had a negative charge.