Rats on the brain.

That’s what New Yorkers have lately, thanks to that tape that boosts the ratings of any news show that can possibly figure out an excuse to air it again: the rodents romping through the Greenwich Village Taco Bell/KFC (Kentucky Fried Critters).

If those rats had agents, they’d have a three-picture deal already. Instead, the nameless gnawers have so seared themselves into public consciousness that they are in danger of turning our hard-boiled Gothamites into Purell-pickled prigs, the kind of folks who place tissue on the seat of any public toilet despite a million studies showing that all this does is end up sticking toilet paper to the thighs. For God’s sake, New York, remember: Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it is several columns over from “tastiness,” and it is not even on the same menu as atmosphere, charm, or authenticity.

Yes, this is a plea for a little more grit and a lot less grandstanding.

Alas, it is a plea too late. Yesterday, a state Senator of the Bronx, Jeff Klein, released a perfectly timed update to his 2005 report “Restaurants That Are Enough To Make You Sick: An Analysis of Unsanitary Conditions at New York City Restaurants.” The report not only has a way-too-long name, it has a way-too-silly idea: Grades. It proposes a new law that would require all restaurants to post their inspection results in the form of a letter grade, A through F.

I’ve got a better idea. Let’s post the results as “R on premises” or “R-Free.” I think we’d all understand what that means. Beyond that, the grade idea is just splitting hairs.

“If a restaurant is open, it’s safe to eat there,” the executive vice president of the New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association, E. Charles Hunt, said. Grades would only start patrons wondering what, exactly, they should be worried about. “Gee, honey, this place got a C. Does that mean its refrigerator isn’t quite cold enough or vermin are breeding in the bread baskets?”

What’s somewhat encouraging is that despite the senator’s heightened, even hysterical, sense of alarm, many New Yorkers are still willing to trust their own tastebuds, let the health reports be damned.

At the Cove Diner yesterday — no. 2 on Mr. Klein’s list of the “10 Worst Restaurants in New York City” — patrons were arriving in droves.

Well, maybe not droves, exactly. But there were two patrons on the premises at dinnertime, and one of them, by golly, was a health inspector.

“I didn’t come here to inspect,” she said, “I live here in the neighborhood.” She’d dropped by to say hi because the restaurant had closed for a while to address its hygienic shortcomings. “I was so incredibly happy when I saw you were open!” she told the cashier.

The cashier was happy to see her back. They both agreed that the place had needed, perhaps, a little “refreshment” (the inspector’s word), but that it had never posed a real health risk.

No, the inspector said, if you’re looking for a health risk, check out the Brooklyn fast food joint she inspected on Friday.

“Do NOT go there. They have the ones” — you know what “ones” are — “this big and that big.” She held her hands 6 and 12 inches apart. “The American rats, they speak my language. They like you. The Norwegian rats, they will fight you. They carry a lot of disease. I just saw that something was there and that something was biting on the chicken in the freezer.”

The cashier looked appalled.

“I went out and puked my brains out,” the inspector concluded.

See? Now, that kind of place would have an “R” on its door and you’d avoid it. Who needs a grade?

From the Cove I jogged up to John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker. This Village favorite had also been closed briefly after a zealous health inspection, but now was back open for business — and business was booming.

“I didn’t see any roaches,” a happy diner said upon emerging from the restaurant. “The food was good and there was ambiance.”

Ambiance and slight health violations: Perfect together.

Another couple was entering the joint, eager for a real New York experience.

“We were recommended this place by someone in Australia,” a tourist, Carla Oliveri, said.

“My friend said it was average pizza but apparently it’s ‘the’ New York pizza,” her friend, Chris Vandenheuvel, said.

The fact that the place had some health violations? That only made it more authentic.

The day New York gets an “A” for cleanliness is the day it becomes Disneyland, and that’s not a place you go for the food. Besides, it has mice.