Calling the Internet Groupmind:

[moon_custafer]

It’s been over thirty years and I still don’t think I get this joke:

So, I’d, a kid, I’m visiting an outdoor museum, and I’m riding in an ox-cart. There are two oxen pulling the cart; I can still see them in my mind’s eye. The old man driving the cart asks me if I can tell them apart from each other. Gesturing at one ox, he says “you see, Bright is right,” and pointing to the other “and Lion’s wrong.”

I’m still not sure if this was a pun on “lying is wrong,” or simply a substitution of the unexpected for the expected word (left/wrong,) but every so often I turn it over in my head and it’s still more mysterious than funny. Or perhaps it wasn’t meant to be funny.

Comments

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

I'm pretty sure the main joke is just the feeble "wrong" instead of "left" substitution. However there is often another intended meta-joke in that the joke is so feeble that it's funny that there's this simpleton trying to be funny. Sort of like Inspector Clouseau or the Three Stooges only clumsy in their joke telling instead of physically clumsy. This was the intention behind a lot of what Johnny Carson did (eg. Carnac the Great), and almost everything Red Skelton did. Red described it as "having fun" as opposed to "being funny" in that he was sardonically laughing at himself and the awfulness of his act and inviting you to laugh along with him.

Personally I find it too artsy-fartsy and high-falutiing kind of comedy that's only popular amongst comedians; rather like noodling Jazz music is mostly enjoyed by Jazz musicians.

BTW - Mad Magazine did the directional joke better in a Dave Berg nautical feature.

How to tell port from starboard: There are two directions. "Port" has the same number of letters as "left". So "port" is left. Now the other direction must be the nautical term that remains and we see that "starboard" is left. Simple!

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I'd go for a combination of both the not-very-inspired pun and the broken expectation.There were probably a lot of kids who thought it was a riot. :)