Cuckoldry is funny in the same way slapstick is. I wouldn't say that it is a reflection of our acceptance or encouragement of infidelity. And this is nothing new. Hundreds of years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer used themes of cuckoldry in his works. We tend to find humour in things that frighten us or otherwise cause misery: pain, death, infidelity, etc. We laugh because it is a nervous release of our worst fears.
Consider Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of grotesque realism:
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Grotesque realism, a kind of genre that opposes ‘high art’ and literature. It includes parody and any other form of discourse which ‘brings down to earth’ anything ineffable or authoritarian, a task achieved principally through mockery: “the people’s laughter which characterized all the forms of grotesque realism from immemorial times was linked with the bodily lower stratum. Laughter degrades and materializes.’ And, “to degrade also means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth.” (Sacrifice and bodily dismemberment can be a part of the death-life cycle).
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Source: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~cklestine...8.Bakhtin.html