"I have never met a dumber broad," complains Bette Midler. Who could it be? Why, the Divine Miss M happens to be describing the Divine Miss M. The occasion: an interview with herself for the tenth-anniversary issue of After Dark magazine. She also appears on the cover, kicking up her heels above a sea of balloons. Soon she will be kicking off her first movie, which, she promises, is "nothing with flying saucers. Nothing with sharks." The Rose is the story of a flamboyant, 1960s blues singer. "It's not about Janis Joplin. It's about a blues singer who wins--beats life at its own game," insists Bette. Her co-star is Alan Bates, who plays her manager. "I've never met Miss Midler," he said after signing for the part. Both hope their work together will not put anyone in mind of Bette's last nightclub act: "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind."

She struggled with the Soviet secret police when they broke into her Moscow apartment to arrest her husband, Alexander, and now, at a distance, Natalya Solzhenitsyn is struggling with them again. This time she is speaking out for the Solzhenitsyns' longtime friend Alexander Ginzburg, 41. Ginzburg, until his arrest 14 months ago, was the administrator in the U.S.S.R. of the $1.7 million Russian Social Fund, established and financed by Solzhenitsyn. Before he was sent to Kaluga prison for alleged anti-Soviet activities, Ginzburg managed to distribute $360,000 to the "wives, children and parents of political prisoners of conscience who need support," says Natalya. To help draw attention to his plight, the Solzhenitsyns set up a Ginzburg Defense Committee in the U.S., composed of artists, journalists and politicians. Last week Natalya left the secluded Solzhenitsyn estate near Cavendish, Vt., and flew to London to launch the committee abroad. Said she: "The case of Alexander Ginzburg should draw the attention of all people, irrespective of their political views."

Christiaan Barnard will soon have to put down his scalpel because of arthritis in his hands, but he is just warming up as a writer. The co-author of a couple of novels with medical themes, the South African heart surgeon last week began a weekly column for Johannesburg's Rand Daily Mail. Although he is consigned to the women's pages, Barnard, 55, addressed himself to men. Where, he wonders, do men stand "now that the stronger sex has escaped from the boudoir and the kitchen?" Says he: "The dainty little thing who sets your pulse racing as she trips along the street ahead of you or displays herself curvily on a beach is nature's chosen sex. She is a much more physiologically efficient arrangement than your hairy, paunchy frame." And to make matters worse, warned Barnard, artificial insemination and women's improved breadwinning ability could make the male obsolete in some sci-fi future. As the doctor sees it, "A few of us may be kept in benign captivity for education and other purposes, but don't count on it."

It was robots v. romance. And the winner? Well, la-de-dah. It was Annie Hall. Though Star Wars won more awards (six in all) at the 50th annual Oscar ceremony, Woody Allen's semiautobiographical love story snared the big ones: Best Picture, Best Actress (Diane Keaton), Best Original Screenplay and Best Director (both won by Allen). Woody never made it to Hollywood, doing instead his regular gig on the clarinet at a Manhattan pub. But Richard Dreyfuss, who is playing in Julius Caesar in Brooklyn, went west to pick up the Best Actor award for his role in The Goodbye Girl. "The English language was somewhere across the room. I felt like a sofa. I couldn't think of anything to say," he recalled later. Jason Robards won Best Supporting Actor for the second year in a row, this time for Julia, and Vanessa Redgrave got Best Supporting Actress, also for Julia. It was she who provided the almost ritualistic bit of upsetting business that characterizes every Oscar night, lashing out in her acceptance speech at "Zionist hoodlums"--the Jews who had protested her nomination for weeks and who picketed the auditorium because she had financed a pro-Palestinian film. It was left to Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky to admonish her: "I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and that a simple thank you would suffice."

Instead of mourning the past, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. believes in reminding people of her late husband's political and spiritual legacy. At a press conference in Atlanta to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his assassination, Coretta Scott King, 50, spoke up for the Humphrey-Hawkins bill: "It's a basic right, having a job. If you have a right to live, you have a right to a means by which to live." She also urged blacks to vote: "People must get as excited about going to the polls as they did going out in the streets and blowing off steam." At a quiet graveside ceremony, she reworked King's famous line, "We cannot be a free people until all our people are free." Said Coretta: "We cannot really be a great society until all of our people have had a chance to share in that greatness." With Martin Luther King III at her side, Coretta softly concluded, "Let us continue to move forward in pursuit of the dream."

Pat Nixon had not left Southern California since her stroke 21 months ago, but last week she flew east to some familiar family haunts: Florida and the Bahamas. Looking tanned and cheery, she and the ex-President, accompanied by 20 Secret Service agents, visited Old Friends Charles G. ("Bebe") Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp. At Bebe's house on Key Largo, Pat and Dick relaxed and enjoyed the sunshine. On the Abplanalps' private 125-acre island in the Bahamas, where Nixon used to vacation in White House days, Pat and Dick helped Robert celebrate his 56th birthday. Pronounced one guest: "It was like a family party." After a dinner of stone crabs, conch chowder, fried yellowtail (Nixon's favorite fish) and cake, Dick seated himself at the piano and plunked out Happy Birthday to You and Home on the Range. Then, declining the postprandial champagne, the Nixons retired at 9:45.

On the Record

Paco Camino, upon retiring from the ring after 23 years as a bullfighter: "There are bulls that were hard to kill, some because they had been brave and fierce and others because the agony of their death is ... well, they look at you. It hurts you. It makes you sad. It's an animal."

Henry Moore, English sculptor: "You get into a rhythm of swinging the hammer in a way that the swing does the work. It's like any other game. Like golf."

Robert Strauss, U.S. Special Representative for Trade Negotiations: "Everybody in government is like a bunch of ants on a log floating down a river. Each one thinks he is guiding the log, but it is really just going with the flow."

Gore Vidal, author, reflecting on his craft: "Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare had perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about five and Samuel Beckett one--and perhaps a clone of that one. I have ten or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them."

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