WAIT, I’VE SEEN THIS GUY: Anthony Weiner (fully clothed!) looks more than a little awkward on the subway yesterday as a straphanger lines him up for a cellphone photo. (AFP/Getty Images)
Welcome to Weiner World — a land of chaos, lies and mass confusion.
After a day spent hiding in his plush apartment, ex-congressman and brand-new mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner poked out his face at a Harlem subway station yesterday morning — infuriating commuters who were unable to leave the station.
“Mr. Weiner!’’ a tall man heckled as Weiner prattled on, condescendingly and infuriatingly, about crowded homeless shelters these working folks have no use for.
The man would not be ignored.
“Is this another publicity stunt? Mr. Weiner! Is this another publicity stunt?’’
Weiner tried to avoid the guy like a sext from a fat chick. Finally, he changed the subject to things like education.
“Where do you go to school?’’ he asked a little boy going down into the subway.
But Weiner, who quit his congressional seat after being caught sending lewd texts of himself in his undies to random, young babes — and who then lied by saying his account had been hacked — didn’t count on meeting up with Lori Coad on the downtown No. 2 train.
Coad, who said she was homeless, pelted him with questions about everything from schools to the quality of his package.
“Stop going online and texting and stuff, man!’’ she cried from across the aisle.
“I ain’t worried about you, that’s your business, just stay off line . . . Stay off Instagram, man!”
He flipped off her appeal as deftly as he did every serious question of the day.
“I thought we were getting along,” Weiner said before moving on.
The pandemonium engulfing Harlem only helped Weiner do what he does best — obfuscate, ignore and refuse to answer questions from people like me. Such as, are you cured of your despicable habit?
Weiner is not the first politician to try to bathe his perverted hands in the supposedly forgiving uptown bosom. But he didn’t count on the moral judgment of its citizens. Or that he would anger commuters trying to get to work, past the crush of media, enemies and well-wishers.
“I need to get by!’’ snarled a woman caught in the crush. Then she shoved me, with both hands, in the chest.
“Is it a Weiner?’’ yelled a woman unable to get a peek through the bodies. “Yes, it’s a Weiner!’’
The candidate’s spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, who yesterday treated the press to sausage-free pizza, yelled at the mob.
“Pull back!’’ she shrieked to dozens of photographers. But between the treacherous subway stairs and the buildings, there was nowhere to run.
“Can we get out? Get out?’’ yelled a frightened-sounding straphanger trying to exit the station.
Maybe a half-dozen potential Weiner fans shook the bare hand of the man of the hour before two cops arrived to get the crowd away from the stairs and quell Hurricane Weiner.
“It’s crazy in Harlem,’’ said Mansel Cuevas, 20, a high-school senior. “He’s got guts to come out here to Harlem. They might give him the bum’s rush!’’
Weiner told me Wednesday, without hesitation, that he did not attend sex-addict rehab but only met with a therapist in Texas for three or four days. But when a reporter asked him about that assertion, he denied it.
“First of all, I did go, so I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He identified the rehab facility — which he swore he never attended — as the Gabbard Center in Houston.
“I went there to visit with some doctors at a facility there. Some psychiatrists. To try to get some help.”
But he wouldn’t give his diagnosis, or describe his treatment, though he denied taking medication to treat his psycho need to strip and send.
What else is he not telling us? Or flat-out fibbing about?
As long as he can hide inside Hurricane Weiner, we may never know until it’s too late.