EL SEÑOR IS LOCO - LIKE A FOX

Method behind mad swordplay

YOU are not permitted to laugh at the fact that Anthony Weiner posed as a man named Carlos Danger while sending pornographic photos of himself through the Internet — sometime after he resigned from Congress for doing just that. Rather, you should admire Weiner’s vision, his ability to see into the future. Clearly, when he took on this new identity, he was anticipating his run for mayor in 2013. After all, there is no Hispanic candidate in the race. What better outreach could there be than Weiner styling himself Carlos Danger — Latino lover, sender of sexedup selfies, purveyor of personal porn?

To be sure, the pennombre Carlos Peligro might have been more authentic. Still, Carlos Danger does give off a whiff of that fine Corinthian leather one remembers Ricardo Montalban (whose brother’s name was Carlos, incidentally) using to sell the Chrysler Cordoba all those years ago, when Anthony Weiner was growing up in poverty in Mexico.

Oh, sorry! He grew up Jewish in Brooklyn, but you know what I mean. And so did the women who received his revelatory, belowthewaist nude photographs, for such images bear the unmistakable evidence of his having been born Jewish.

Clearly, though, Weiner’s true identity — you know, the repulsive, uncontrolled, powerhungry publicity hound willing to humiliate everyone he loves by raising his profile yet again when he knew there was material out there even worse than the stuff that got him ousted from Congress — is itself a pose, a ruse.

For when night falls and his wife is out of the hacienda, Anthony is at last free to become his best self — yes, I mean the mysterious man in black mask and hat and cape known only as the Carlos Danger, who haunts the mail of Yahoo with intimate photographs of his personal Zorro.

Choose, if you wish, to look at this latest revelation as the end of Weiner’s amazing resuscitation. Indeed, one can imagine him doing the same in his fury and disappointment when contemplating a confrontation with the editor of the charmingly named Web site TheDirty.com, which revealed his secret, and echoing the words of Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride”: “Hello. My name is Carlos Danger. You killed my comeback. Prepare to die.”

But over the past couple of weeks, we have been given reason to think that perhaps we have failed to consider the extent of Weiner’s foresk . . . I mean, foresight.

Could it be that his humiliating resignation from Congress in 2011 had actually been part of a master plan? That he understood it would be just the thing he needed to get famous, depart from politics and then come roaring back to bid for the office he has always wanted — an office more powerful and more meaningful than the one he had to quit?

Did he foresee that he would be up against a field of pipsqueaks and seem, at the very least, more interesting than they were? That enough New Yorkers would decide it would be cool not to care about his conduct to give him a real sense of momentum going into the September primary?

Yes, his emergence as Carlos Danger might be just the thing to make Anthony Weiner rise to the top at last!

No, laughter will not be permitted — except, perhaps, at the New Yorkers who have actually put this ambulatory psychopath in or near the lead in the mayor’s race.