The Ratty News Exclusive: The Barabbas Interview – Good Friday 2026
Two thousand years on, the choice remains - and so does the grace
By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Investigative Reporter Extraordinaire
The Ratty News Foreign Desk | Special Report
It is once again the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, and I, Roderick McNibble - known to my loyal readers as Whiskers - found myself in a place even dustier and more desperate than last year. This is not a story to play with lightly.
On this most solemn of Fridays, how could a rat from Dusty Gulch ignore the weight of it all?
I touched down in an undisclosed city after a ten-minute flight that bent the laws of time, space, sobriety, and probably a few international treaties. Ratty Airways’ signature orange biplane - fitted with dynamic whisker propulsion (an innovation I may or may not have invented after four Marmalade Brandies courtesy of the Dusty Gulch Country Women’s Association Brewing and Distilling Company) - performed admirably.
The high wind helped. The rationed fuel did not. Fortunately, Whiskers Dynamic Propulsion (WDP) kicked in, and I flew over the Strait of Hormuz within seconds, avoiding radar and potential trouble.
The Unleavened Lounge hadn’t improved with age.
It reeked of stale beer, goat musk, and something newer - desperation. The oil shock from the closed Strait of Hormuz still rippled outward: empty tanks, soaring prices, restless queues. A dusty ceiling fan spun like a crooked halo, stirring flies and whispers of blackouts. In the corner, goats grazed lazily beneath flickering footage of empty highways and ration lines.
And there, in a shadowed booth, sat the man… or rather, the archetype.
Barabbas.
No longer just the notorious prisoner. No longer a single smug face. Today he was something more unsettling: cloaked in a black executioner’s hood, eye slits glinting as he swirled a golden goblet of fermented goat milk.
The milk, like everything else, had become expensive.
I slid into the seat opposite, notebook ready, whiskers twitching.
“Barabbas,” I began, “you walked free that day while an innocent man was nailed to the cross. That wasn’t just chance, was it? Political strings. Crowd manipulation. Paid agitators. Deals made in shadows. ”
A low chuckle seeped from beneath the hood.
“You think I didn’t know?” he said. “Of course I knew. The Galilean spoke too plainly - against corruption, hypocrisy, power. I was convenient. The crowd got what it roared for.”
I leaned forward. The lone sheep in the bar looked confused.
“And now? With oil shortages, silenced voices, fear in the streets - does anything feel different?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“Different tools. Same game.”
He swirled the goblet.
He tilted his head slightly.
“Speak too plainly today - against elites, entanglements, cultural decay - and you’re dragged before modern magistrates. Maybe it’s not a cross. Maybe it’s a cell. Maybe it’s just silence. But the lesson’s the same.”
“And the real operators?” I asked.
“They walk,” he said simply. “Just like me.”
The fan creaked overhead.
“The bribe to Judas?” he continued. “That was amateur hour. Today’s influence flows through pipelines - money, media, machines that feed the mob exactly what it wants to hear.”
He leaned in.
“The crowd still thirsts. Maybe not always for blood - but for power, speed, certainty. They’ll cheer the disruptor… while the truth-teller gets nailed up.”
I felt the weight of it settle.
“So nothing has changed?” I asked quietly.
“Nothing essential,” he said.
“Bribes evolve. Lies adapt. The crowd stays the same. And the ones who speak truth like that carpenter from Nazareth…”
He paused.
“They still pay.”
I turned toward the imaginary camera, voice lower now.
“Two thousand years on, and the choice remains. In a world dimming under distant chokepoints and tightening controls, the crowd still chooses its Barabbas - the one who promises theatre over sacrifice, speed over truth.”
I glanced back at the hooded figure.
“The good still get crucified. Sometimes literally. Often metaphorically.”
A pause.
“But that’s not the end of the story.”
I steadied my notes.
“The scandal of this day isn’t just injustice. It’s that the innocent didn’t have to take the cross.”
“He chose it.”
“For Barabbas.”
“For the crowd.”
“For all of us - whether we admit it or not.”
I looked at him one last time.
“Do you regret it?”
He lifted the goblet, the hood hiding everything but those thin slits of shadow.
“What do you think?” he said.
So next time you see the guilty walking free while truth-tellers face the nails - or the cell - remember:
It didn’t start yesterday.
It started with Barabbas.
And in 2026, under oil shocks and shrinking freedoms, the pattern still holds. The only question left is this:
When the crowd roars… who do you choose?
When I returned to Dusty Gulch, I spoke with Mrs Mavis Upton, teacher at the Gulch Sunday School.
She reminded me of something simple.
“The crowd made a choice that day,” she said quietly. “But so did He.”
She paused, then added:
“That’s why we remember it.”
And perhaps that’s the part we forget.
Not just that the crowd chose Barabbas… but that the innocent chose the cross.
This is Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble signing out.
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